Aldiss, Brian W - The Dark Light Years v11

The Dark Light Years

Brian Aldiss

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Sharp, witty, sad, August 5, 2001

Reviewer:

In a myriad of SF-writers, Brian Aldiss has always stood out because of his ability to infuse typical genrescenarios with unique imagination and gentle irony, and The Dark Light Years is the author at his best.The plot follows humanity's first contac with an alien race called the Utods, an intelligent, gentle peoplewho think technology is a strange Idea and socialize using their excrements(!). Aldiss turns this scenariointo a humorous but but bleak fable about human nature, with lots of sideways glances at heavyphilosophical themes like the nature of communication, religion and progress. A great book, halfwaybetween Ellison and Asimov. Thoroughly recommended.

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I can't figure it out., June 18, 2000

Reviewer:

I don't know , Brian Aldis is a great writer , he wrote masterpieces like "The Long Afternoon On Earth"and "Space , Time And Netaniel" but this book is just horrible.

It's REALLY dated , totaly flat charecters , childish aliens , and the story itself is pretty bad.

I like most of his work , and he does have ingenius sparks sometimes , but this book is lame! For somegood read of Aldis you should try "the interpreter" or "The Long Afternoon On Earth".--This text refersto theMass Market Paperback edition .

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Smells Like Intelligent Life, March 29, 2000

Reviewer:

If mankind met an alien race which built no structures and wallowed in mud, would we understand theirintelligence? If we found they communicated by tasting the excretions of others in the mud wallow, wouldwe be ready to communicate? Think so? A cautionary fable by SF great Brian Aldiss displays a lot lesstrust in mankind's basic decency towards less developed civilzations.



TITLES BY BRIAN ALDISS AVAILABLE IN PANTHER BOOKS

New Arrivals, Old Encounters

Helliconia Spring

Frankenstein Unbound

Moreau's Other Island

Enemies of the System

Brothers of the Head

Earthworks

Cryptozoic

Starswarm

Hothouse

Space, Time and Nathaniel

Barefoot in the Head


Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

Last Orders

The Malacia Tapestry

The Primal Urge

Moment of Eclipse

Greybeard

Author



Brian Aldiss was born in Norfolk in 1925. During the Second World War he served in the British Armyin the Far East. He began his professional career as a bookseller in Oxford and then went on to becomeLiterary Editor of theOxford Mail. For many years Brian Aldiss was a film reviewer and poet.The three outspoken and bestselling novels making upThe Horatio Stubbs Saga (TheHand-Reared Boy (1970),A Soldier Erect (1971), andA Rude A wakening (1978)) brought hisname to the attention of the general book-buying public, but in the science fiction world hisreputation as an imaginative and innovative writer had long been established.Non-Stop, hisfirst SF novel, was published in 1958, and among his many other books in this genre areHothouse (published in 1962 and winner of the Hugo Award for the year's best novel),The DarkLight Years (1964),Greybeard (1964) andReport on Probability A (1968). In 1965, the titlestory ofThe Saliva Tree, written as a celebration of the centenary of H. G. Wells, won a NebulaAward. In 1968, Aldiss was a voted the United Kingdom's most popular SF writer by the BritishScience Fiction Association. And in 1970, he was voted 'World's Best Contemporary ScienceFiction Author'. Brian Aldiss has also edited a number of anthologies, a picture book on fantasyillustration(Science Fiction Art(l975)) and has written a history of science fiction,Billion YearSpree (1973). The first two volumes of the epic Helliconia trilogy, published to critical acclaim,areHelliconia Spring (1981) andHelliconia Summer (1983).

By the same author

Fiction

The Brightfounl Diaries

The Primal Urge

The Male Response

The Hand-Reared Boy

A Soldier Erect

A Rude Awakening

The Malacia Tapestry

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Non-Stop

Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

Equator

Hothouse



Greybeard

Earthworks

The Saliva Tree

Cryptozoic

Barefoot in the Head

The Eighty-Minute Hour:

A Space Opera Report on Probability A Frankenstein Unbound Brothers of the Head Moreau's OtherIsland

The Helliconia TrilogyHelliconia Spring Helliconia Summer Helliconia Winter

Stories

Space, Time and Nathaniel

Starswarm

The Best SF Stories of Brian

Aldiss Intangibles Inc., and

Other Stories

The Moment of Eclipse

Cosmic Inferno

Last Orders

New Arrivals, Old Encounters

Non-fiction

Cities and Stones

The Shape of Further Things

Billion Year Spree

Hell's Cartographers



(with Harry Harrison)Science Fiction Art (Editor)This World and Nearer Ones

Anthologies and Series

(as Editor)Best Fantasy Stories Introducing Science Fiction The Penguin Science Fiction

Omnibus Space Opera Space Odysseys Evil Earths

Galactic Empires 1 & 2 Perilous Planets

With Harry HarrisonNebula A ward Stories 2 Farewell, Fantastic Venus! The Year's BestScience Fiction

(annually from 1968)The Astounding Analog

Reader(2 volumes)Decade 1940s Decade 1950s Decade 1960s The SFs Masters Series

BRIAN ALDISS


PANTHER

Granada Publishing

Panther Books

Granada Publishing Ltd

8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA

Published by Panther Books 1979 Reprinted 1984

First published in Great Britain by Faber&Faber Ltd 1964

Copyright © Brian W. Aldiss 1964 ISBN 0-586-04987-8

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow

Set in Intertype Times

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the publishers.



This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding orcover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A few light years with artificial flavouring

for

HARRY HARRISON

poet, philosopher, pacemaker, pieman

Contents

Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN



CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant intothe vacant,The captains, merchant bankers, eminent menof letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen andthe rulers....

T. S. ELIOT

CHAPTER ONE

Onthe ground, new blades of grass sprang up in chlorophyll coats. On the trees, tongues of greenprotruded from boughs and branches, wrapping them about - soon the place would look like an imbecileEarthchild's attempt to draw Christmas trees - as spring again set spur to the growing things in thesouthern hemisphere of Dapdrof.

Not that nature was more amiable on Dapdrof than elsewhere. Even as she sent the warmer windsover the southern hemisphere, she was sousing most of the northern in an ice-bearing monsoon.

Propped on G-crutches, old Aylmer Ainson stood at his door, scratching his scalp very leisurely andstaring at the budding trees. Even the slenderest outmost twig shook very little, for all that a stiffish breezeblew.

This leaden effect was caused by gravity; twigs, like everything else on Dapdrof. weighed three timesas much as they did on Earth. Ainson was long accustomed to the phenomenon. His body had grownround-shouldered and hollow-chested accustoming him to it. His brain had grown a littleround-shouldered in the process.



Fortunately he was not afflicted with the craving to recapture the past that strikes down so manyhumans even before they reach middle age. The sight of infant green leaves woke in him only the vaguestnostalgia, roused inhim only the faintest recollection that his childhood had been passed among foliagemore responsive to April's zephyrs - zephyrs, moreover, a hundred light years away. He was free tostand in the doorway and enjoy man's richest luxury, a blank mind.

Idly, he watched Quequo. the female utod, as she trod between her salad beds and under the ammptrees to launch her body into the bolstering mud. The ammp trees were evergreen, unlike the rest of thetrees in Ainson's enclosure. Resting in the foliage on the crest of them were big four-winged white birds,which decided to take off as Ainson looked at them, fluttering up like immense butterflies and splashingtheir shadows across the house as they passed.

But the house was already splashed with their shadows. Obeying the urge to create a work of art thatvisited them perhaps only once in a century, Ainson's friends had broken the white of his walls with ascatterbrained scattering of silhouetted wings and bodies, urging upwards. The lively movement of thispattern seemed to make the low-eaved house rise against gravity; but that was appearance only, for thisspring found the neoplastic rooftree sagging and the supporting walls considerably buckled at the knees.

This was the fortieth spring Ainson had seen flow across his patch of Dapdrof. Even the ripe stenchfrom the mid-denstead now savoured only of home. As he breathed it in, his grorg or parasite-eaterscratched his head for him; reaching up, Ainson returned the compliment and tickled the lizard-likecreature's cranium. He guessed what the grorg really wanted, but at that hour, with only one of the sunsup, it was too chilly to join Snok Snok Karn and Quequo Kifful with their grorgs for a wallow in the mire.

"I'm cold standing out here. I am going inside to lie down," he called to Snok Snok in the utodiantongue.

The young utod looked up and extended two of hislimbs in a sign of understanding. That wasgratifying. Even after forty years* study, Ainson found the utodian language full of conundrums. He hadnot been sure that he had not said. "The stream is cold and I am going inside to cook it." Catching theright whistling inflected scream was not easy: he had only one sound orifice to Snok Snok's eight. Heswung his crutches and went in.

"His speech is growing less distinct than it was," Quequo remarked. "We had difficulty enough teachinghim to communicate. He is not an efficient mechanism, this manlegs. You may have noticed that he ismoving more slowly than he did."



"I had noticed it, Mother. He complains about it himself. Increasingly he mentions this phenomenon hecalls pain."

"It is difficult to exchange ideas with Earthlegs because their vocabularies are so limited and their voicerange minimal, but I gather from what he was trying to tell me the other night that if he were a utod hewould now be almost a thousand years old."

"Then we must expect he will soon evolve into the carrion stage."

"That, I take it. is what the fungus on his skull signified by changing to white."

This conversation was carried out in the utodian language, while Snok Snok lay back against the hugesymmetrical bulk of his mother and soaked in the glorious ooze. Their grorgs climbed about them,licking and pouncing. The stench, encouraged by the sun's mild shine, was gorgeous. Their droppings,released in the thin mud, supplied valuable oils which seeped into their hides, making them soft.

Snok Snok Karn was already a large utod, a strapping offspring of the dominant species of thelumbering world of Dapdrof. He was in fact adult now, although still neuter: and in his mind's lazy eye hesaw himself as amale for the next few decades anyhow. He could change sex when Dapdrof changedsuns; for that event, the periodical entropic solar orbital disestablishment. Snok Snok was well prepared.Most of his lengthy childhood had been taken up with disciplines preparing him for this event. Quequohad been very good on disciplines and on mindsuckle; secluded from the world as the two of them werehere with Manlegs Ainson, she had given them all of her massive and maternal concentration.

Languidly, he deretracted a limb, scooped up a mass of slime and mud. and walloped it over his chestThen, recollecting his manners, he hastily sloshed some of the mixture over his mother's back.

"Mother, do you think Manlegs is preparing for esod?" Snok Snok asked, retracting the limb into thesmooth wall of his flank. Manlegs was what they called Aylmer; esod was a convenient way of squeakingabout entropic solar orbital disestablishmentism.

"It's hard to tell, the language barrier being what it is," Quequo said, blinking through mud. "We havetried to talk about it, but without much success. I must try again; we must both try. It would be a serious



matter for him if he were not prepared - he could be suddenly converted into the carrion stage. But theymust have the same sort of thing happening on the Manlegs planet."

"It won't be long now, Mother, will it?"

When she did not bother to answer, for the grorgs were trotting actively up and down her spine, SnokSnok lay and thought about that time, not far off now, when Dapdrof would leave its present sun, SaffronSmiler, for Yellow Scowler. That would be a hard period, and he would need to be male and fierce andtough. Then eventually would come Welcome White, the happy star, the sun beneath which he had beenborn (and which accounted for his lazy and sunny good nature); under Welcome White, he could affordto take on the cares and joys ofmotherhood, and rear and train a son just like himself.

Ah. but life was wonderful when you thought deeply about it. The facts of esod might seem prosaic tosome, but to Snok Snok, though he was only a simple country boy (simply reared too, without anynotions about joining the priesthood and sailing out into the star-realms), there was a glory about nature.Even the sun's warmth, that filled his eight-hundred-and-fifty pound bulk, held a poetry incapable ofparaphrase. He heaved himself to one side and excreted into the midden, as a small tribute to his mother.Do to others as you would be dung by.

"Mother, was it because the priesthood had dared to leave the worlds of the Triple Suns that they metthe Manlegs Earthmen?"

"You're in a talkative mood this morning. Why don't you go in and talk to Manlegs? You know howhis version of what happens in star-realms amuses you."

"But, Mother, which version is true, his or ours?"

She hesitated before giving him her answer; it was a wretchedly difficult answer, yet only through it layan understanding of the world of affairs. She said: "Frequently there are several versions of truth."

He brushed the remark aside.

"But it was the priesthood that went beyond the Triple Suns who first met the Manlegs, wasn't it?"



"Why don't you lie still and ripen up?"

"Didn't you tell me they met on a world called Grud-grodd, only a few years after I was born?"

"Ainson told you that in the first place."

"It was you who told me that trouble would come from the meeting.

The first encounter between utod and man occurred ten years after the birth of Snok Snok. As SnokSnok said, this encounter was staged on the planet his race called Grudgrodd. Had it happened on adifferent planet, haddifferent protagonists been involved, the outcome of the whole matter might havebeen other than it was. Had someone ... but there is little point in embarking on conditionals. There areno "ifs" in history, only in the minds of observers reviewing it, and for all the progress we make, nobodyhas proved that chance is other than a statistical delusion invented by man. We can only say that eventsbetween man and utod fell out in such and such a way.

This narrative will chronicle these events with as little comment as possible, leaving the reader on hishonour to remember that what Quequo said applies as much to man as to aliens: truths arrive in as manyforms as lies.

Grudgrodd looked tolerable enough to the first utods who inspected it.

Autodian star-realm-ark had landed in a wide valley, inhospitable, rocky, cold, and covered withknee-high thistles for the greater part of its length, but nevertheless closely resembling some of thebenighted spots one happened on in the northern hemisphere of Dapdrof. A pair of grorgs were sent outthrough the hatch, to return in half an hour intact and breathing heavily. Odds were, the place washabitable.

Ceremonial filth was shovelled out on to the ground and the Sacred Cosmopolitan was induced toexcrete out of the hatch, in the universal gesture of fertility.



"I think it's a mistake," he said. The utodian for "a mistake" was Grudgrodd (as far as an atonal gruntcan be rendered at an into terrestrial script), and from then on the planet was known as Grudgrodd.

Still inclined to protest, the Cosmopolitan stepped out, followed by his three Politans, and the planetwas claimed as an appendage of the Triple Suns.

Four priestlings scurried busily about, clearing a circle in the thistles on the edge of the river. With alltheir six limbs deretracted, they worked swiftly, two of them scooping soil out of the circle, and thenallowing the water totrickle in from one side, while the other two trod the resulting mud into a richrebarbative treacle.

Watching the work abstractedly with his rear eyes, the Cosmopolitan stood on the edge of thegrowing crater and argued as strongly as ever a utod could on the rights and wrongs of landing on aplanet not of the Triple Suns. As strongly as they could, the three Politans argued back.

"The Sacred Feeling is quite clear," said the Cosmopolitan. "As children of the Triple Suns, ourdefecations must touch no planets unlit by the Triple Suns; there are limits to all things, even fertility." Heextended a limb upwards, where a large mauve globe as big as an ammp fruit peered coldly at themover a bank of cloud. "Is that apology for a sun Saffron Smiler? Do you take it for Welcome White? Canyou even mistake it for Yellow Scowler? No, no, my friends, that mauve misery is an alien, and we wasteour substance on it."

The first Politan said, "Every word you say is incontrovertible. But we are not here entirely by option.We ran into a star-realm turbulence that carried us several thousand orbits off course. This planet justhappened to be our nearest haven."

"As usual you speak only the truth," the Cosmopolitan said. "But we needn't have landed here. Amonth's flight would have taken us back to the Triple Suns and Dapdrof, or one of her sister planets. Itdoes seem a bit unholy of us."

"I don't think you need worry too much about that, Cosmopolitan," said the second Politan. He hadthe heavy greyish green skin of one born while an esod was actually taking place, and was perhaps theeasiest going of all the priesthood. "Look at it this way. The Triple Suns round which Dapdrof revolveonly form three of the six stars in the Home Ouster. Those six stars possess between them eight worldscapable of supporting life as we know it. After Dapdrof, we count the other seven worlds as equallyholyand fit for utodammp, though some of them - Buskey for instance - revolve round one of the three lesser



stars of the cluster. So the criterion of what is utodammp-' worthy is not that it has to revolve about oneof the Triple Suns. Now we ask -"

But the Cosmopolitan, who was a better speaker than a listener, as befitted a utod in his position, cuthis companion short

"Let us ask no more, friend. I just observed that it seemed a bit unholy of us. I didn't mean anycriticism. But we are setting a precedent." He scratched his grorg judicially.

With great tolerance, the third Politan (whose name was Blue Lugug) said, "I agree with every wordyou say, Cosmopolitan. But we do not know if we are setting a precedent Our history is so long that itmay be that many and many a crew branched out into the star-realm and there, on some far planet, setup a new swamp to the glory of utodammp. Why, if we look around, we may even find utods establishedhere.'1

"You persuade me utterly; in the Revolution Age, such a thing could easily have happened," said theCosmopolitan, in relief. Stretching out all six of his limbs, he waved them ceremonially to include groundand sky. "I pronounce all this to be land belonging to the Triple Suns. Let defecation commence."

They were happy. They grew even happier. And who could not be happy? With ease and fertility athand, they were at home.

The mauve sun disappeared in disgrace, and almost at once a snowball-bright satellite wearing a rakishhalo of dust sprang out of the horizon and rose swiftly above them. Used to great changes oftemperature, the eight utods did not mind the increasing cold of night. In their newly-built wallow, theywallowed. Their sixteen attendant grorgs wallowed with them, clinging with sucker fingerstenaciously totheir hosts when the utods submerged beneath the mud.

Slowly they imbibed the feel of the new world. It lapped at their bodies, yielded up meaningsincapable of translation into their terms.

In the sky overhead gleamed the Home Cluster, six stars arranged in the shape - or so the leastintellectual of the priestling claimed - of one of the grails that swam the tempestuous seas of Smeksmer.



"We needn't have worried," said the Cosmopolitan happily. "The Triple Suns are still shining on ushere. We needn't hurry back at all. Perhaps at the end of the week we'll plant a few ammp seeds andthen move homewards."

"... Or at the end of the week after next," said the third Politan. comfortable in his mud bath.

To complete their contentment, the Cosmopolitan gave them a brief religious address. They lay andlistened to the web of bis discourse as it was spun out of his eight orifices. He pointed out how the ammptrees and the utods were dependent upon each other, how the yield of the one depended on the yield ofthe other. He dwelt on the significances of the word "yield" before going on to point out how both thetrees and the utods (both being the manifestations of one spirit) depended on the light yield that pouredfrom whichever of the Triple Suns they moved about. This light was the droppings of the suns, whichmade it a little absurd as well as miraculous. They should never forget, any of them, that they alsopartook of the absurd as well as the miraculous. They must never get exalted or puffed up; for were noteven their gods formed in the divine shape of a turdling?

The third Politan much enjoyed this monologue. What is most familiar is most reassuring.

He lay with only the tip of one snout showing above the bubbling surface of the mud, and spoke in hissubmerged voice, through his ockpu orifices. With one of his unsub-merged eyes, he gazed across at thedark bulk of their star-realm-ark, beautifully bulbous and black against the sky. Ah, life was good andrich, even so far away from beloved Dapdrof. Come next esod. he'd really have to change sex andbecome a mother; he owed it to his line; but even that... well, as he'd often heard his mother say, to apleasant mind all was pleasant. He thought lovingly of his mother, and leant against her. He was as fondof her as ever since she had changed sex and become a Sacred Cosmopolitan.

Then he squealed through all orifices. Behind the ark, lights were flashing. The third Politan pointed thisout to his companions. They all looked where he indicated. Not lights only. A continuous growling noise.Not only one light Four round sources of light, cutting through the dark, and a fifth light that moved aboutrestlessly, like a fumbling limb. It came to rest on the ark.

"I suggest that a life form is approaching," said one of the priestlings.

As he spoke, they saw more clearly. Heading along the valley towards them were two chunky shapes.From the chunky shapes came the growling noise. The chunky shapes reached the ark and stopped. Thegrowling noise stopped.



"How interesting! They are larger than we are," said the first Politan.

Smaller shapes were climbing from the two chunky objects. Now the light that had bathed the arkturned its eye on to the wallow. In unison, to avoid being dazzled, the utods moved thek vision to a morecomfortable radiation band. They saw the smaller shapes - four of them there were, and thin-shaped -line up on the bank.

"If they make their own light, they must be fairly intelligent," said the Cosmopolitan. "Which do youthink thelife forms are - the two chunky objects with eyes, or the four thin things?"

"Perhaps the thin things are their grorgs." suggested a priestling.

"It would be only polite to get out and see," said the Cosmopolitan. He heaved his bulk up and beganto move towards the four figures. His companions rose to follow him. They heard noises coming from thefigures on the bank, which were now backing away.

"How delightful!" exclaimed the second Politan, hurrying to get ahead. "I do believe they are trying intheir primitive way to communicate!"

"What fortune that we came!" said the third Politan. but the remark was, of course, not aimed at theCosmopolitan.

"Greetings, creatures!" bellowed two of the priestlings.

And it was at that moment that the creatures on the bank raised Earth-made weapons to their hips andopened fire.



CHAPTER TWO

Captain Bargerone struck a characteristic posture. Which is to say that he stood very still with hishands hanging limply down the seams of his sky blue shorts and rendered his face without expression. Itwas a form of self-control he had practised several times on this trip, particularly when confronted by hisMaster Explorer. "Do you wish me to take what you are saying seriously.

"Ainson?" he asked. "Or are you merely trying to delay take-off?"

Master Explorer Bruce Ainson swallowed; he was a religious man, and he silently summoned theAlmighty to help him get the better of this fool who saw nothing beyond his duty.

"The two creatures we captured last night have definitely attempted to communicate with me, sir.Under space exploration definitions, anything that attempts to communicate with a man must beregarded as at least subhuman until proved otherwise."

"That is so, Captain Bargerone," Explorer Phipps said, fluttering his eyelashes nervously as he rose tothe support of his boss.

"You do not need to assure me of the truth of platitudes, Mr. Phipps." the Captain said. "I merelyquestion what you mean by 'attempt to communicate'. No doubt when you threw the creatures cabbagethe act might have been interpreted as an attempt to communicate."

"The creatures did not throw me a cabbage, sir," Ainson said. "They stood quietly on the other side ofthe bars and spoke to me."

The captain's left eyebrow arched like a foil being tested by a master fencer.

"Spoke. Mr. Ainson? In an Earth language? In Portuguese, or perhaps Swahili?'*



"In their own language, Captain Bargerone. A series of whistles, grunts, and squeaks often risingabove audible level. Nevertheless, a language - possibly a language vastly more complex than ours."

"On what do you base that deduction, Mr. Ainson?"

The Master Explorer was not floored by the question, but the lines gathered more thickly about hisrough-hewn and sorrowful face.

"On observation. Our men surprised eight of those creatures, sir, and promptly shot six of them. Youshouldhave read the patrol report. The other two creatures were so stunned by surprise that they wereeasily netted and brought back here into theMariestopes. In the circum-stances, the preoccupationof any form of life would be to seek mercy, or release if possible. In other words, it wouldsupplicate. Unfortunately, up till now we have met no other form of intelligent life in the pocketof the galaxy near Earth; but all human races supplicate in the same way - by using gesture aswell as verbal plea. These creatures do not use gesture; their language must be so rich innuance that they have no need for gesture, even when begging for their lives."

Captain Bargerone gave an excruciatingly civilized snort

"Then you can be sure that they were not begging for their lives. Just what did they do, apart fromwhining as caged dogs would do?"

"I think you should come down and see them for yourself, sir. It might help you to see thingsdifferently."

"I saw the dirty creatures last night and have no need to see them again. Of course I recognize thatthey form a valuable discovery; I said as much to the patrol leader. They will be off-loaded at the LondonExozoo, Mr. Ain-son, as soon as we get back to Earth, and then you can talk to them as much as youwish. But as I said in the first place, and as you know, it is time for us to leave this planet straight away; Ican allow you no further time for exploration. Kindly remember this is a private Company ship, not aCorps ship, and we have a timetable to keep to. We've wasted a whole week on this miserable globewithout finding a living thing larger than a mouse-dropping, and I cannot allow you another twelve hourshere."

Bruce Ainson drew himself up. Behind him, Phipps sketched an unnoticed pastiche of the gesture.



"Then you must leave without me, sir. And without Phipps. Unfortunately, neither of us was on thepatrol lastnight, and it is essential that we investigate the spot where these creatures were captured. Youmust see that the whole point of the expedition will be lost if we have no idea of their habitat. Knowledgeis more important than timetables."

"There is a war on, Mr. Ainson, and I have my orders."

"Then you will have to leave without me, sir. I don't know how the USGN will like that."

The Captain knew how to give in without appearing beaten.

"We leave in six hours, Mr. Ainson. What you and your subordinate do until then is your affair."

"Thank you, sir," said Ainson. He gave it as much edge as he dared.

Hurrying from the captain's office, he and Phipps caught a lift down to disembarkation deck andwalked down the ramp on to the surface of the planet provisionally labelled12B .

The men's canteen was still functioning. With sure instinct, the two explorers marched in to find themembers of the Exploration Corps who had been involved in the events of the night before. The canteenwas of preformed reinplast and served the synthetic foods so popular on Earth. At one table sat astocky young American with a fresh face, a red neck, and a razor-sharp crewcut. His name was HankQuilter, and the more perceptive of bis friends had him marked down as a man who would go far. He satover a synthwine (made from nothing so vulgar as a grape grown from the coarse soil and ripened by theunrefined elements) and argued, his surly-cheerful face animated as he scorned the viewpoint of GingerDuffield, the ship's weedy messdeck lawyer.

Ainson broke up the conversation without ceremony. Quilter had led the patrol of the previous night.

Draining his glass, Quilter resignedly fetched a thin youth named Walthamstone who had also been on



thepatrol, and the four of them walked over to the motor pool - being demolished amid shoutingperparatory to take-off - to collect an overlander.

Ainson signed for the vehicle, and they drove off with Walthamstone at the wheel and Phippsdistributing weapons. The latter said, "Bargerone hasn't given us much time, Bruce. What do you hope tofind?"

"I want to examine the site where the creatures were captured. Of course I would like to findsomething that would make Bargerone eat humble pie." He caught Phipps' warning glance at the men andsaid sharply, "Quilter, you were in charge last night. Your trigger-finger was a bit itchy, wasn't it? Did youthink you were in the Wild West?"

Quilter turned round to give his superior a look.

"Captain complimented me this morning," was all he said.

Dropping that line of approach, Ainson said, "These beasts may not look intelligent, but if one issensitive one canfeel a certain something about them. They show no panic, nor fear of any kind."

"Could be as much a sign of stupidity as intelligence." Phipps said.

"Mm, possible, I suppose. All the same. ... Another thing, Gussie, that seems worth pursuing.Whatever the standing of these creatures may be. they don't fit with the larger animals we've discoveredon other planets so far. Oh, I know we've only found a couple of dozen planets harbouring any sort oflife - dash it, star travel isn't thirty years old yet. But it does seem asif light gravity planets breed lightspindly beings and heavy planets breed bulky compact beings. And these critters are exceptions to therule."

"I see what you mean. This world has not much more mass than Mars, yet our bag are built likerhinoceroses."

"They were all wallowing in the mud like rhinos when we found them," Quilter offered. "How couldthey have any intelligence?"



"You shouldn't have shot them down like that They must be rare, or we'd have spotted someelsewhere on 12B before this."

"You don't stop to think when you're on the receiving end of a rhino charge," Quilter sulked.

"So I see."

They rumbled over an unkempt plain in silence. Ainson tried to recapture the happiness he hadexperienced on first walking across this untrod planet. New planets always renewed his pleasure in life;but such pleasures had been spoiled this voyage - spoiled as usual by other people. He had beenmistaken to ship on a Company boat; life on Space Corps boats was more rigid and simple;unfortunately, the Anglo-Brazilian war engaged all Corps ships, keeping them too busy with solar systemmanoiuvres for such peaceful enterprises as exploration. Nevertheless, he did not deserve a captain likeEdgar Bargerone.

Pity Bargerone did not blast-off and leave him here by himself, Ainson thought. Away from people,communing -he recollected his father's phrase - communing with nature!

The people would come to 12B. Soon enough it would have, like Earth, its over-population problems.That was why it was explored: with a view to colonization. Sites for the first communities had beenmarked out on the other side of the world. In a couple of years, the poor wretches forced by economicnecessity to leave all they held dear on Earth would be trans-shipped to 12B (but they would have apretty and tempting colonial name for it by then: Clementine, or something equally obnoxiouslyinnocuous).

Yes, they'd tackle this unkempt plain with all the pluck of their species, turning it into a heaven ofdirt-farming and semi-detacheds. Fertility was the curse of the human race, Ainson thought Too muchprocreation went on;Earth's teeming loins had to ejaculate once again, ejaculate its unwanted progenyon to the virgin planets that lay awaiting - well, awaiting what else?

Christ, what else? There mustbe something else, or we should all have stayed in the nice greenharmless Pleistocene.



Ainson's rancid thoughts were broken by Waltham-stone's saying, "There's the river. Just round thecorner, and then we're there."

They rounded low banks of gravel from which thorn trees grew. Overhead, a mauve sun gleameddamply through haze at them. It raised a shimmer of reflection from the leaves of a million million thistles,growing silently all the way to the river and on the other side of it as far as the eye wanted to see. Onlyone landmark: a big blunt odd-shaped thing straight ahead.

"It - " said Phipps and Ainson together. They stared at each other. " - looks like one of the creatures."

"The mudhole where we caught them is just the other side," Walthamstone said. He bumped theoverlander across the thistle bed, braking in the shadow of the looming object, forlorn and strange as achunk of Liberian carving lying on an Aberdeen mantelshelf.

Toting their rifles, they jumped out and moved forward.

They stood on the edge of the mudhole and surveyed it One side of the circle was sucked by the greylips of the river. The mud itself was brown and pasty green, streaked liberally with red where five bigcarcasses took their last wallow in the carefree postures of death. The sixth body gave a heave andturned a head in their direction.

A cloud of flies rose in anger at this disturbance. Quilter brought up his rifle, turning a grim face toAinson when the latter caught his arm.

"Don't kill it," Ainson said. "It's wounded. It can't harm us."

"We can't assume that. Let me finish it off."

"I said not. Quilter. We'll get it into the back of the overlander and take it to the ship; we'd bettercollect the dead ones too. Then they can be cut up and their anatomy studied. They'd never forgive us onEarth if we lost such an opportunity. You and Walthamstone get the nets out of the lockers and haul thebodies up."



Quilter looked challengingly at his watch and at Ainson.

"Get moving," Ainson ordered.

Reluctantly. Walthamstone slouched forward to do as he was told; unlike Quilter, he was not of thestuff from which rebels are made. Quilter curled his lip and followed. They hauled the nets out and wentto stand on the edge of the mud pool, gazing across it at the half-submerged evidence of last night'sactivities before they got down to work. The sight of the carnage mollified Quilter.

"We sure stopped them!" he said. He was a muscular young man. with his fair hair neatly cropped anda dear old white-haired mother back home in Miami who pulled in an annual fortune in alimony.

"Yeah. They'd have got us otherwise." Walthamstone said. "Two of them I shot myself. Must havebeen those two nearest to us."

"I killed two of them, too." Quilter said. "They were all wallowing in the mud like rhinos. Boy, did theycome at us!"

"Dirty things when you come to look at them. Ugly. Worse than anything we've got on Earth. Aren'thalf glad we plugged them, aren't you, Quil?"

"It was us or them. We didn't have any choice."

"You're right there." Walthamstone cuddled his chin and looked admiringly at his friend. You had toadmit Quilter was quite a lad. He repeated Quilter's phrase, "We didn't have any choice."

"What the hell good are they, I'd like to know."



"So'd I. We really stopped them, though, didn't we?"

"It was us or them." repeated Quilter. The flies rose again as he paddled into the mud towards thewounded rhinoman.

While this philosophical skirmish was in progress, Bruce Ainson stalked over to the object thatmarked the scene of the slaughter. It loomed above him. He was impressed. This shape, like the shape ofthe creatures it appeared to imitate, had more than its size to impress him; there was something about itthat affected him aesthetically It might be a hundred light years high and it'd still be - don't say beautydoesn't exist! - beautiful.

He climbed into the beautiful object. It stank to high heaven; and that was where it had been intendedfor. Five minutes' inspection left him in no doubt: this was a ... well, it looked like an overgrown seedpod.and it had the feel of an overgrown seedpod. but it was - Captain Bar-gerone had to see this: this was aspace ship.

A space ship loaded high with shit.

CHAPTER THREE

Much happened during the year 1999 on Earth. Quins were born to a twenty-year-old mother inKennedyville, Mars. A robot team was admitted for the first time into the World series. New Zealandlaunched its own system-ship. The first Spanish nuclear submarine was launched by a Spanish princess.There were two one-day revolutions in Java, six in Sumatra, and seven in South America. Brazildeclaredwar on Great Britain. Common Europe beat the U.S.S.R. at football. A Japanese screen star married theShah of Persia. The gallant All-Texan expedition attempting to cross the bright side of Mercury inexotanks perished to a man. All-Africa set up its first radio-controlled whale farm. And a little grizzledAustralian mathematician called Buzzard rushed into his mistress's room at three o'clock of a Maymorning shrieking. "Got it. got it! Transponential flight!"

Within two years, the first unmanned and experimental transponential drive had been built into arocket, launched, and proved successful. They never got that one back.



This is not the place for an explanation of TP formulae; the printer, in any case, refuses to set threepages of math symbols. Suffice it to say that a favourite science fiction gimmick - to the dismay andsubsequent bankruptcy of all science fiction writers - was suddenly translated into actuality. Thanks toBuzzard, the gulfs of space became not barriers between but doorways to the planets. By 2010. youcould get from New York to Procyon more comfortably and quickly than it had taken, a century before,to get from New York to Paris.

That is what's so tedious about progress. Nobody seems able to jog it out of that dreary oldexponential curve.

All of which goes to show that while the trip between B12 and Earth took less than a fortnight by theyear 2035. that still left plenty of time for letter writing.

Or - in Captain Bargerone's case, as he composed a TP cable to their lordships in the Admiralty - forcable writing.

In the first week he cabled:

TP POSITION: 355073x 6915 (Bl2). YOUR CABLE EX 97747304 REFERS. YOUR ORDERCOMPLIED WITH. HENCEFORTH CREATURES CAPTIVE ABOARD KNOWN ASEXTRATERRESTIAL ALIENS (SHORTENED TO ETAS).

SITUATION REGARDING ETAS AS FOLLOWS: TWO ALIVE AND WELL IN NUMBERTHREE HOLD. OTHER CARCASSES BEING DISSECTED TO STUDY THEIR ANATOMY. ATFIRST I DID NOT REALIZE THEY WERE MORE THAN ANIMALS. DIRECTLY MASTEREXPLORER AINSON EXPLAINED SITUATION TO ME, I ORDERED HIM TO PROCEEDWITH PARTY TO SCENE OF CAPTURE OF ETAS.

THERE WE FOUND EVIDENCE THAT ETAS HAVE INTELLIGENCE. SPACE SHIP OFSTRANGE MANUFACTURE WAS TAKEN INTO CUSTODY. IT IS NOW IN MAIN CARGOHOLD AFTER REDISTRIBUTION OF CARGO. SMALL SHIP CAPABLE OF HOLDINGONLY FIGURE 8 ETAS. NO DOUBT SHIP BELONGS ETAS. SAME FILTH OVEREVERYTHING. SAME OFFENSIVE SMELL. EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT ETAS ALSOEXPLORING Bl2.



HAVE ORDERED AINSON AND HIS STAFF TO COMMUNICATE WITH ETAS SOONESTHOPE TO HAVE LANGUAGE PROBLEM CRACKED BEFORE LANDING.

EDGAR BARGERONE.

CAPT. MARIESOPES.

GMT 1750:6.7.2035.

Other prosodists were busy aboard theMariestopes.

Walthamstone wrote laboriously to an aunt in a far-flung western suburb of London called Windsor:

My dear old aunt Flo -

We are now coming home to see you again, how is your ruhmatism, looking up I hope. I havenot been space sick this voyage. When the ship goes into TP drive if you know what this is you feela bit sick for a couple of hours. My pal Quilt says that's because all your molecules go negative.But then you're all right.

When we stopped at one planet which hasn't got no name because we were the first, Quilt andme had a chance to go hunting. The place is swarming with big fierce dirty animals as big as theship. It lives in mudholes. We shot dozens. We got two alive ones on board this old tub, we callthem rhmomen, their names are Gertie and Mush. They are filthy. I have to clean out their cagebut they don't bite. They make a lot of rude noises.

As usual the food is bad. Not only poison but small helpings. Give my love to cousin Madge, Iwonder if her edducation is completed yet. Whose winning the war with Brazil, us I hope!!!!

Hoping this leaves you as it finds me at present,



your loving nephew,

Rodney.

Augustus Phipps was composing a love letter to a Sino-Portuguese girl; above his bunk was a phobe ofher looking extremely sinuous. Phipps regarded it frequently as he wrote:

Ah CM darling.

This brave old bus is now pointing towards Macao. My heart as you know is permanentlyoriented (no pun intended) towards that fair place when you are holidaying there, but how goodto know we shall soon be together in more than spirit

I'm hoping this trip will bring us fame and fortune. For we have found a sort of strange life outhere in this neck of the galaxy, and are bringing two live samples of it home. When I think of you,so slender, sweet, and immaculate in your cheongsam, I wonder why we need such dirty uglybeasts on the same planet - but science must be served.

Wonder of wonders! - They're supposed to be intelligent according to my superior, and we arepresently engaged in trying to talk to them. No, don't laugh, pretty though I remember yourlaughter to be. How I long for the moment I can talk to you, my sweet and passionate Ah Chi; andof course not only talk! You must let me [Ed. -two pages omitted].

Until we can do the same sort of thing again.

Your devoted adoring admiring pulsatingAugustus.

Meanwhile, down on the messdeck of theMariestopes, Quilter also was wrestling with the problemof communicating with a girl:

Hi honey!



Right now as I write I am heading straight back to Dodge City as fast as the light waves willcarry me. Got the captain and the boys along with me too, but I'll be shedding them before I dropin at 1477 Rainbow.

Beneath a brave exterior, your lover boy is feeling sour way up to here. These beasts, therhinomen I was telling you about, they are the filthiest things you ever saw, and I can't tell youabout it in the mails. Guess it's because you like me I know have always taken a pride in beingmodern and hygienic, but these things they're worse than animals.

This has finished me for the Exploration Corps. At trip's end, I quit and shall remuster in theSpace Corps. You can go places in the Space Corps. As witness our Captain Bargerone, jumpedup from nowhere. His father is caretaker or something at a block of flats Amsterdam way. Well,that's democracy - guess I'll try some myself, maybe wind up captain myself. Why not?

This seems to be written all around me, honey. When I get home you bet I'll be all around you.

Your lovingest chewingest Hank.

In his cabin on B deck. Master Explorer Bruce Ainson wrote soberly to his wife:

My dearest Enid,

How often I pray that your ordeal with Aylmer may now be over. You have done all you couldfor the boy, never reproach yourself on that score. He is a disgrace to our name. Heaven aloneknows what will become of him. I fear he is as dirty-minded as he is dirty in his personal habits.

My regret is that I have to be away so long, particularly when a son of ours is causing so muchtrouble. But a consolation is that at last this trip has become rewarding. We have located a majorlife form. Under my supervision, two live individuals of this form have been brought aboard thisship. ETA's we call them.

You will be considerably more surprised when I tell you that these individuals, despite their



strange appearance and habits, appear to manifest intelligence. More than that, they seem to be aspace-faring race. We captured a space ship that undoubtedly is connected with them, thoughwhether they actually control the craft is at present undecided. I am attempting to communicatewith them, but as yet without success.

Let me describe the ETA's to you - rhinomen, the crew call them, and until a better designationis arrived at, that will do. The rhinomen walk on six limbs. The six limbs each terminate in verycapable hands, widespread, but each bearing six digits, of which the first and last are opposedand may be regarded as thumbs. The rhinomen are omnidextrous. When not in use, the limbs areretracted into the hide rather like a tortoise's legs, and are then barely noticeable.

With its limbs retracted, a rhinoman is symmetrical and shaped roughly like the two segmentsof an orange adhering together, the shallow curve representing the creature's spine, the fullercurve its belly, and the two apices its two heads. Yes, our captives appear to be two-headed; theheads come to a point and are neckless, though they can swivel through several degrees. In eachhead are set two eyes, small and dark in colour with lower lids that slide upward to cover the eyesduring sleep. Beneath the eyes are orifices which look alike; one is the rhinoman's mouth, one hisanus. There are also several orifices punctuating the expanse of body; these may be breathingtubes. The exobiologists are dissecting some corpses we have aboard with us. When I get theirreport.several things should be clearer.

Our captives encompass a wide range of sounds, ranging through whistles and screams togrunts and smacking noises. I fear that all orifices are able to contribute to this gamut of sound,some of which, I am convinced, goes above man's auditory threshold. As yet neither of ourspecimens is communicative, though all the sounds they make to each other are automaticallyrecorded on tape; but I am sure this is merely due to the shock of capture, and that on Earth, withmore time, and in a more congenial environment where we can keep them more hygienically, weshall soon begin to obtain positive results.

As ever, these long voyages are tedious. I avoid the captain as much as I can; an unpleasantman, with public school and Cambridge written all over him. I immerse myself in our two ETA's.For all their unpleasant habits, they have a fascination my human companions lack.

There will be much to talk about on my return.

Your dutiful husband,

Bruce.



Down in the main cargo hold, safely away from all the letter-writing, a mixed bag of men of all tradeswas stripping the ETA space ship and pulling it to pieces splinter by splinter. For the strange craft wasmade of wood, wood of an unknown toughness, wood of an unknown resilience, wood as tough anddurable as steel - yet wood which on the inside, for it was shaped like a great pod, sprouted a variety ofbranches like horns. On these branches grew a lowly type of parasitic plant. One of the triumphs of thebotanical team was the discovery that this parasite was not the natural foliage of the horn-branches but analien growing thereon.

They also discover that the parasite was a glutton for absorbing carbon dioxide from the air andexuding oxygen. They scraped bits of the parasite from the horn-branches and attempted to grow it inmore favourableconditions; the plant died. At the current one hundred and thirty-fourth attempt, it wasstill dying, but the men in Bot were noted for stubbornness.

The interior of the ship was caked with filth of a certain rich consistency made up chiefly of mud andexcrement When comparing this dirty little wooden coracle with the gleamingly cleanMariestopes, itwould have been impossible for an rational individual - and rational individuals exist even amid theincarcerations of space travel - to imagine that both craft were constructed for the same purpose.Indeed, many of the crew, and notably those who prided themselves on their rationality, were loud intheir laughter as they refused to concede that the alien artifact was anything but a well-frequented jakes.

Discovering the drive quenched about 98 per cent of the laughter. Under the mire the motor lay, astrange distorted thing no bigger than a rhinoman. It was snugged into the wooden hull without visiblewelding and bolting; it was made of a substance outwardly resembling porcelain; it had no moving parts;and a ceramicist followed it weeping with a wild surmise into the engineering labs when the unit wasfinally drilled and grilled from the hull

The next discovery was a bunch of great nuts that clung to the two peaks of the roof with a tenacitythat defied the best flame-cutters. At least, some said they were nuts, for a fibrous husk covering themsuggested die fruits of the coconut palm. But when it was perceived that the ribs running down from thenuts which had hitherto been regarded as wall strengtheners connected with the drive, several sagesdeclared the nuts to be fuel tanks.

The next discovery put an end to discoveries for a time. An artisan chipping at a hardened bank of dirtdiscovered, entombed within it, a dead ETA. Thereupon the men gathered together and made emotionalnoises.

"How much longer are we going to stand for this, fellows?" cried Interior Rating Ginger Duffield,



jumping onto a tool box and showing them white teeth and black fists. "This is a company ship, not aCorps ship, and we don't have to put up with just any old treatment they care to give us.There's nothing down in regulations says we have to clean out alien tombs and bogs. I'mdowning tools till we get Dirty Pay. and I demand you lot join me."

His words drew forth a babble of response.

"Yes, make the company pay!"

"Who do they think they are?"

"Let 'em clean out their own stink holes!"

"More pay! Time and a half, boys!"

"Get knotted, Duffield, you ruddy trouble-maker."

"What does the sergeant say?"

Sergeant Warrick elbowed his way through the bunch of men. He stood looking up at Ginger Duffield,whose lean and peppery figure did not wilt under the gaze.

"Duffield, I know your sort. You ought to be out on the Deep Freeze Planet, helping to win the war.We don't want none of your factory tactics here. Climb down off that box and let's all get back to work.A bit of dirt won't harm your lily white hands."

Duffield spoke very quietly and nicely.

"I'm not looking for any trouble, sarge. Why should we do it, that's all I say. Don't know what



dangerous disease is lurking in this little cesspit. We want danger money for working in it. Why should werisk our necks for the company? What's the company ever done for us?" A rumble of approval greetedthis question, but Duffield affected to take no notice of it. "What're they going to do when we get home?Why, they're going to put this stinking alien box on show, and everyone's going to come and have a lookand a sniff at ten tubbies a tune. They're going to make their fortune out of this and out of those animalsthat lived in it. So why shouldn't we have our little bite now? You just push along to C Deck and bringthe Unionman to see us, hey, sarge, and keep that nose of yours out of trouble, hey?"

"You're nothing but a flaming trouble-maker, Duffield, that's your trouble," the sergeant said angrily.He pushed through the men, heading for C Deck. Mocking cheers followed him into the corridor.

Two watches later, Quilter, armed with hose and brush, entered the cage containing the two ETA's.They sprouted their limbs and moved to the far end of the confined space, watching him hopefully.

"This is the last clean-out you guys are going to get from me," Quilter told them. "At the end of thiswatch, I'm joining the walk-out, just to demonstrate my solidarity with the Space Corps. After this, as faras I'm concerned, you can sleep in crap as deep as the Pacific."

With the fun-loving ebullience of youth, he turned the hose on to them.

CHAPTER FOUR

The news editor of theWindsor Circuit struck the pedal bar of his technivision and scowled at therepresentation of his chief reporter's face as it appeared on the screen.

"Where the hell are you, Adrian? Get down to the bloody spaceport as you were told. TheMariestopes is due within half an hour."

The left half of Adrian Bucker's countenance screwed itself into a wince. He leant nearer to his screenuntil his nose opaqued and the vision misted and said, "Don't be like that, Ralph. I've got a local angle onthe trip that you'll fairly lap up."



"I don't want a local angle, I want you down at that ruddy spaceport right away, my lad."

Bucker winced the right side of his face and began talking fast.

"Listen, Ralph. I'm in "The Angel's Head' - the pub right on the Thames. I've got an old girl here calledFlorence Walthamstone. She's lived in Windsor all her life, remembers when the Great Park was a park,all that sort of stuff. She's got a nephew called Rodney Walthamstone who's a rating on theMariestopes.She's just been showing me a letter from him in which he describes these alien animals they're bringinghome, and I thought that if we ran a picture of her, with a quote from the letter - you know, Local LadHelps Capture Those Monsters - it would look -"

"That's enough, I've heard enough. This thing's the biggest news of the decade and you imagine weneed a local angle to put it over? Give the old girl her letter back, thank her very much for the offer, payfor her drink, pat her dear wrinkled cheeks, and then get down to that bloody spaceport and interviewBargerone or I'll have your skin for flypaper."

"Okay, okay, Ralph, have it the way you want it. There was a time when you were open tosuggestions." Having cut the circuit, Bucker added, "And I've got one I could make right now."

He pushed out of the booth, and jostled his way through a heavy-bodied, heavy-drinking mass of menand women to a tall old woman crushed into the corner of the bar. She was lifting a glass of dark brownto her lips, her little finger genteelly cocked at an angle.

"Was your editor excited?" she asked, splashing slightly.

"Stood on his head. Look, Miss Walthamstone, I'm sorry about this, but I've got to get down to thespaceport. Perhaps we can do a special interview with you later. Now I've got your number; don'tbother to ring us, we'll ring you, right, eh? Very nice to meet you."

As he gulped the last of his drink down, she said, "Oh, but you ought to let me pay for that one, Mr. -"



"Very kind of you, if you insist, very kind, Miss Walthamstone. 'Bye then."

He flung himself among the filling stomachs. She called his name. He looked back furiously from themiddle of the fray.

"Have a word with Rodney if you see him. He'd be ever so glad to tell you anything. He's a very niceboy."

He fought his way to the door, muttering, "Excuse me, excuse me," over and over, like a curse.

The reception bays at the spaceport were crowded. Ordinary and extraordinary citizens packed everyroof and window. In a roped-off section of the tarmac stood representatives of various governments,including the Minister for Martian Affairs, and of various services, including the Director of the LondonExozoo. Beyond the enclosure, the band of a well-known regiment, uniformed in anachronistically brightcolours, marched about playing Suppers Light Cavalry Overture and selections of Irish melodies. Icecream was hawked, newspapers were sold, pockets were picked. TheMariestopes slid through a layerof nimbostratus and settled on its haunches in a distant part of the field.

It began to rain.

The band embarked on a lively rendering of the twentieth-century air "Sentimental Journey" withoutadding much lustre to the proceedings. As such occasions usually are, this occasion was dull, its interestdiffused. The spraying of the entire hull of the ship with germicidal sprays took some while. A hatchopened, a little overalledfigure appeared in the opening, was cheered, and disappeared again. Athousand children asked if that was Captain Bargerone and were told not to be silly.

At length a ramp came out like a reluctant tongue and lolled against the ground. Transport - three smallbuses, two trucks, an ambulance, various luggage tenders, a private car. and several military vehicles -converged on to the great ship from different parts of the port. And finally a line of human beings beganto move hastily down the ramp with bowed heads and dived into the shelter of the vehicles. The crowdcheered; it had come to cheer.

In a reception hall, the gentlemen of the press had made the air blue with the smoke of theirmescahales before Captain Bargerone was thrust in upon them. Flashes sizzled and danced as he smiled



defensively at them.

With some of his officers standing behind him, he stood and spoke quietly and unsensationally in a veryEnglish way (Bargerone was French) about how much space there was out there and how many worldsthere were and how devoted his crew had been except for an unfortunate strike on the way home forwhich someone, he hoped, was going to get it hot; and he finished by saying that on a very pleasantplanet which the USGN had graciously decided should be known as Clementina they had captured orkilled some large animals with interesting characteristics. Some of these characteristics he described. Theanimals had two heads, each of which held a brain. The two brains together weighed 2,000 grammes - aquarter more than man's. These animals, ETA's or rhinomen, as the crew called them, had six limbswhich ended in undoubted equivalents of hands. Unfortunately the strike had hindered the study of theremarkable creatures, but there seemed a fair reason to suppose that they had a language of their ownand must therefore, despite their ugliness and dirty habits, be regarded as more or less - but of coursenobody could be certain as yet, and it might take manymonths of patient research before we could becertain - as an intelligent form of life on a par with man and capable of having a civilization of their own,on a planet as yet unknown to man. Two of them were preserved in captivity and would go to theExozoo for study.

When the speech was over, reporters closed round Bargerone.

"You're saying these rhinos don't live on Clementina?"

"We have reason to suppose not."

"What reason?"

("Smile for theSubud Times, please, Captain.")

"We think they were on a visit there, just as we were."

"You mean they travelled in a spaceship?"

"In a sense, yes. But they may just have been taken along on the trip as experimental animals - or



dumped there, like Captain Cook's pigs dumped on Tahiti or wherever it was."

("More profile, Captain, if you please.")

"Well, did you see their spaceship?"

"Er well, we think we actually have ... er, their spaceship in our hold."

"Give, then, Captain, this is big! Why the secrecy? Have you captured their spaceship or have younot?"

("And over this way. sir.")

"We think we have. That is, it has the properties of a spaceship, but it, er - no TP drive naturally, butan interesting drive, and, well, it sounds silly but you see the hull is made of wood. A very high-densitywood." Captain Bargerone wiped his face clear of expression.

"Oh now look. Captain, you're joking... ."

In the mob of photographers, phototects, and reporters, Adrian Bucker could get nowhere near thecaptain. He elbowed his way across to a tall nervous man who stood behind Bargerone, scowling out ofone of the long windows at the crowds milling about in the light rain.

"Would you tell me how you feel about these aliens you brought back to Earth, sir?" Bucker asked."Are they animals or are they people?"

Hardly hearing, Bruce Ainson sent his gaze probing over the crowds outside. He thought he hadcaught a glimpse of his good-for-nothing son, Aylmer, wearing his usual hangdog expression as heplunged through the mob.



"Swine," he said.

"You mean they look like swine or they act like swine?"

The explorer turned to stare at the reporter.

"I'm Bucker of theWindsor Circuit, sir. My paper would be interested in anything you could tell usabout these creatures. You think they are animals, am I right in saying?"

"What would you say mankind is, Mr. Bucker, civilized beings or animals? Have we ever met a newrace without corrupting it or destroying it? Look at the Polynesians, the Guanches, the American Indians,the Tasmanians "

"Yes, sir, I get your point, but would you say these aliens...."

"Oh, they have intelligence, as has any mammal; these are mammals. But their behaviour or lack ofbehaviour is baffling because we must not think anthropomorphically about them. Have they ethics, havethey consciences? Are they capable of being corrupted as the Eskimos and Indians were? Are theyperhaps capable of corrupting us? We have to ask ourselves a lot of searching questions before we arecapable of seeing these rhinomen clearly. That is my feeling on the matter."

"That is very interesting. What you are saying is that we have to develop a new way of thinking, is thatit?"

"No, no, no, I hardly think this is a problem I can discuss with a newspaper representative, but manplaces too much trust in his intellect; what we need is a new way of feeling, a more reverent.... I wasgetting somewhere with those two unhappy creatures we have captive - establishing trust, you know,after we had slaughtered their companions and taken them prisoner, and what is happening to them now?They're going to be a sideshow ha the Exozoo. The Director, Sir Mihaly Pasztor, is an old friend of mine;I shall complain to him."

"Heck, people want to see the beasts! How do we know they have feelings like ours?"



"Your view, Mr. Bucker. is probably the view of the damn fool majority. Excuse me, I have atechnical! to make."

Ainson hurried from the building, where the wedge of people instantly closed in and heldhim tight. Hestood helpless there while a lorry moved slowly by, buoyed along with cheers, cries and exclamationsfrom the onlookers. Through the bars at the back of the lorry, the two ETA's stared down on theonlookers. They made no sound. They were large and grey, beings at once forlorn and formidable.

Their gaze rested on Bruce Ainson. They gave no sign of recognition. Suddenly chilled, he turned andbegan to worm his way through the press of wet mackintoshes.

The ship was emptying and being emptied. Cranes dipped their great beaks into the ship's vitals,coming up with nets full of cartons, boxes, crates, and canisters. Sewage lighters swarmed, sucking outthe waste from the metal creature's alimentary canal. The hull bled men in little gouts. The great whaleMariestopes was stranded and powerless, beached far from its starry native deeps.

Walthamstone and Ginger Duffield followed Quilter to one of the exit ducts. Quilter was loaded withkit and due to catch an ionosphere jet from another corner of the port to the U.S.A. in half an hour'stime. They paused on the lip of the ship and looked out quizzically, inhaling the strange-tasting air.

"Look at it, worst weather in the universe," Walthamstone complained. "I'm staying in here till it stops,I tell you straight."

"Catch a taxi." Duffield suggested.

" 'Tisn't worth it. My aunt's place is only half a mile away. My bike's over there in the P.T.O.'s offices.I'll cycle when the rain clears - if it does."

"Does the P.T.O. let you leave your bike there free between flights?" Duffield asked with interest.



Anxious not to get involved in what promised to become a rather English conversation, Quiltershrugged a duffel bag more comfortably on to his shoulders and said, "Say, you men, come on over tothe flight canteen and have a nice warm British synthbeer with me before I go."

"We ought to celebrate the fact that you have just left the Exploration Corps," Walthamstone said."Shall we go along, Ginger?"

"Did they stamp your paybook 'Discharged' and sign you off officially?" Duffield asked.

"I only signed on on a Flight-by-flight basis," Quilter explained. "All perfectly legal, Duffield, you oldbarrack-room lawyer, you. Don't you ever relax?"

"You know my motto, Hank. Observe it and you won't go wrong: 'They'll twist you if they can."I knewa bloke a bit ago who forgot to get his 535 cleared by the Quartermaster before he was demobbed, andthey had him back. They did, they caught him for another five years. He's serving on Charon now,helping to win the war."

"Are you coming for this beer or aren't you?"

"I'd better come," Walthamstone said. "We may never see you again after this bird in Dodge City getsat you, from what you've told me about her. I'd run a mile from that sort of girl, myself."

He moved tentatively out into the fine drizzle; Quilter followed, glancing back over his shoulder atDuffield.

"Are you coming, Ginger, or aren't you?"

Duffield looked crafty.

"I'm not leaving this ship till I get my strike pay, mate," he said.



Explorer Phipps was home. He had embraced his parents and was hanging his coat in the hall. Theystood behind him, managing to look discontented even while they smiled. Shabby, round-shouldered,they gave him the grumbling welcome he knew so well. They spoke in turn, two monologues that nevermade a dialogue.

"Come along in the sitting-room, Gussie. It's warmer in there," his mother said. "You'll be cold afterleaving the ship. I'll get a cup of tea in a minute."

"Had a bit of trouble with the central heating. Shouldn't need it now we're into June, but it has beenusually chilly for the time of year. It's such a job to get anyone to come and look at anything. I don'tknow what's happening to people. They don't seem to want your custom nowadays."

"Tell him about the new doctor, Henry. Terribly rude man, absolutely no education or manners at all.And dirty finger-nails - fancy expecting to examine anyone with dirty finger-nails."

"Of course, it's the war that's to blame. It's brought an entirely different type of man to the surface.Brazil shows no sign of weakening, and meanwhile the government -"

"The poor boy doesn't want to hear about the war directly he gets home, Henry. They've even startedrationing some foodstuffs! All we hear is propaganda, propaganda, on the techni. And the quality ofthings has deteriorated too. I had to buy a new saucepan last week -"

"Settle yourself down here, Gussie. Of course it's the war that's to blame. I don't know what's tobecome of us all. The news from Sector 160 is so depressing, isn't it?"

Phipps said, "Out in the galaxy, nobody takes any interest in the war. I must say it all sounds a bit of ashower to me."

"Haven't lost your patriotism, have you, Gussie?" his father asked.

"What's patriotism but an extension of egotism?" Phipps asked, and was glad to see his father's chest,



momentarily puffed, shrink again.

His mother broke a tense silence by saying, "Anyhow, dear, you'll see a difference in England whileyou're on leave. How long have you got, by the way?"

Little as the parental chatter enthralled Phipps, this sudden question discomforted him, as mother andfather waited eagerly for his answer. He knew that stifling feeling of old. They wanted nothing of him,only that he was there to be spoken to. They wanted nothing from him but his life.

"I shall only be staying here for a week. That charming part-Chinese girl that I met last leave, Ah Chi,is in the Far East on a painting holiday. Next Thursday I fly to Macao to stay with her."

Familiarity again. He knew his father's would-be piteous shake of the head, that particular pursing ofhis mother's lips as if she nursed a lemon pip there. Before they could speak, he rose to his feet.

"I'll just go upstairs and unpack my grip, if you'll both excuse me."

CHAPTER FIVE

Pasztor,Director of the London Exozoo, was a fine willowy man without a grey hair on his headdespite his fifty-two years. A Hungarian by birth, he had led an expedition into the submarine Antarcticby the time hewas twenty-five, had gone on to set up the Tellus Zoological Dome on the asteroid Apolloin 2005. and had written the most viewed technidrama of 2014,An Iceberg for Icarus. Several yearslater he went on the First Charon Expedition, which charted and landed upon that thennewly-discovered planet of the solar system; Charon refrigerates so unloveably some threethousand million miles beyond the orbit of Pluto that it earned itself the name of Deep FreezePlanet, Pasztor had given it that nickname.

After which triumph, Sir Mihaly Pasztor was appointed Director of the London Exozoo and was atpresent employed in offering Bruce Ainson a drink.



"You know I don't, Mihaly," Bruce said, shaking his long head in reproof.

"From now on you are a famous man; you should toast your own success, as we toast it. The drinksare all pure synthetics, you know - a de-alcoholized sinker will surely never hurt you."

"You know me of old, Mihaly. I wish only to do my duty."

"I know you of old, Bruce. I know that you care very little for the opinions or the applause of anyoneelse, so thirstily do you crave for the nod of approval from your own superego," the Director said in amild voice, while the bartender mixed him the cocktail known as a Trans-ponential. They were at thereception being held in the hotel belonging to the Exozoo, where murals of exotic beasts stared down ona bracing mixture of bright uniforms and flowery dresses.

"I do not stand in need of titbits from your well of wisdom," Ainson said.

"You will not allow that you have need of anything from anybody," said the Director. "I have meant tosay this to you for a long while, Bruce - though this is neither the time nor the place, let me continue now Ihave begun.

You are a brave, learned, and formidable man. That you have proved not only to the world but toyourself. You can now afford to relax, to let down your guard. Not only can you now afford to do so;you ought to do so before it is too late. A man has to have an interior, Bruce, and yours is dying ofsuffocation -"

"For heavens' sake, man!" Ainson exclaimed, breaking away half laughing, half angry. "You are talkinglike an impossibly romantic character in one of the plays of your nonage! I am what I am, and I am nodifferent from what I have always been. Now here comes Enid, and it is high tune we changed thesubject."

Among the bright dresses, Enid Ainson's hooded cobra costume looked as sunny as an eclipse. Shesmiled, however, as she came up to her husband and Pasztor.



"This is a lovely party, Mihaly. How foolish I was not to have come to the last one, the last time Brucecame home. You have such a pretty room here to hold it in, too."

"For wartime, Enid, we try to squeeze a little extra gaiety, and your appearance has done the trick."

She laughed, obviously pleased, but compelled to protest.

"You're flattering me, Mihaly, just as you always do."

"Does your husband never flatter you?"

"Well, I don't know. ... I don't know if Bruce - I mean -"

"You're being silly, the pair of you," Ainson said. "The noise in here is enough to make anyonesenseless. Mihaly, I've had enough of all this frippery, and I'm surprised that you haven't too, Enid. Let'sget down to business; I came here to hand the ETA's over to you officially, and that's what I want to do.Can we discuss that in peace and quiet somewhere?"

Pasztor had trim eyebrows which rose towards his hairline, descended, and then moved together in afrown.

"Are you trying to distract me from my duty to the bartender? Well, I suppose we can slip down tothe new ETA enclosure, if you must. Your specimens should be installed by now, and the spaceportofficials out of the way."

Ainson turned to his wife, laying a hand on her arm.

"You come along too, Enid; the excitement up here isn't good for you."



"Nonsense, my dear, I'm enjoying myself." She removed her arm from his grasp.

"Well really, you might show a little interest in the creatures we have brought back."

"I've no doubt I shall hear about them for weeks!" She looked at the canyons of his face and said, inthe same humorously resigned tone, "Very well, I'll come along if you can't bear to have me out of yoursight. But you'll have to go and get my wrap, because it is too cool to go outside without it."

Not making a graceful thing of it, Ainson left them. Pasztor cocked an eyebrow at Enid, and securedthem a drink apiece.

"I don't know really whether I ought to have another, Mihaly. Wouldn't it be terrible if I got tipsy!"

"People do, you know. Look at Mrs. Friar over there. Now I've got you alone, Enid, instead of flirtingwith you as I have a mind to do, I have to ask you about your son, Aylmer. What is he doing now?Where is he?"

He detected her brief flush. She looked away from him as she spoke.

"Don't please, don't spoil the evening, Mihaly. It's so nice to have Bruce back. I know you think he's aterrible old monster, but he isn't really, not underneath."

"How is Aylmer?"

"He's in London. Apart from that, I don't know."

"You are too harsh with him."



"Please, Mihaly!"

"Bruce is too harsh with him. You know I say that as an old friend, as well as Aylmer's godfather."

"He did something disgraceful, and his father turned "him out of the house. They have never got on welltogether, as you know, and although I am terribly sorry about the boy, it is much more peaceful withouthaving both of them to cope with." She looked up at him to add. "And don't go thinking I always take theline of least resistance, because I don't. For years I had a real battle with them."

"I never saw a face look less embattled. What did Aylmer do to bring this terrible edict down upon hishead?"

"You must ask Bruce, if you're so keen to know."

"There was a girl involved?"

"Yes. it was over a girl. And here comes Bruce."

When the Master Explorer had settled the wrap about his wife's shoulders, Mihaly led them out of thehall by a side door. They walked along a carpeted corridor, downstairs, and out into the dusk. The zoolay quiet, though one or two London starlings moved belatedly to bed among the trees, and from itsheated pool a Rungsted's sauropod raised its neck to gaze in a dun wonder at their passage. Turningbefore they reached the Methane Mammal House, Pasztor led his companions to a new blockconstructed in the modern manner of sanded reinforced plastic blocks and strawed concrete with leadverticals. As they entered by a side door, lights came on.

Reinforced curving glass separated them from the two ETA's. The creatures turned about as the lightscame on, to watch the humans. Ainson made a half-hearted gesture of recognition towards them; itproduced no perceptible reaction.

"At least they have spacious accommodation," he said. "Does the public have to throng here all day,



pressing its beastly noses to the glass?"

"The public will only be admitted to this block between 2.30 and 4 in the afternoon," Pasztor said, "Inthe mornings, experts will be here studying our visitors."

The visitors had an ample double cage, the two parts separated by a low door. At the back of oneroom was a wide low bed padded with a plastic foam. Troughs filled with food and water lined one ofthe other walls. The ETA's stood in the centre of the floor; they had already amassed a fair amount of dirtabout them.

Three lizard-like animals scuttled across the floor and flung themselves on to the massive bodies of theETA's, They scuttled for a fold of skin and disappeared. Ainson pointed towards them.

"You see that? Then they are still there. They look very like lizards. I believe there are four of them alltogether; they keep close to the extra-terrestrials. There were two of them accompanying the dying ETAwe took aboard theMariestopes. Probably they are synoecists or even sym-bionts. The fool of a captainheard of them from my reports and wanted them destroyed - said they might be dangerous parasites -but I stood out against him."

"Who was that? Edgar Bargerone?" Pasztor asked. "A brave man. not brilliant; he probably still clingsto the geocentric conception of the universe."

"He wanted me to be communicating with these fellows before we touched Earth! He has noconception of the problems confronting us."

Enid, who had been watching the captives intently, looked up and asked, "Are you going to be able tocommunicate with them?"

"The question is not as simple as it would appear to a layman, my dear. I'll tell you all about it anothertime."

"For God's sake. Bruce, I'm not a child. Are you or aren't you going to be able to communicate withthem?"



The Master Explorer tucked his hands into the hip flounces of his uniform and regarded his wife. Whenhespoke, it was smoulderingly, as a preacher from the elevation of a pulpit.

"With a quarter of a century's stellar exploration behind us, Enid, the nations of Earth - despite the factthat the total number of operational starships at any one time rarely exceeds a dozen - have managed tosurvey about three hundred roughly Earth-type planets. On those three hundred planets, Enid, they havesometimes found sentient life and sometimes not. But they have never found beings that could beregarded as having any more brain than a chimpanzee. Now we have discovered these creatures onClementina, and we have our reasons for suspecting that they may possess an intelligence equivalent toman's - the main circumstantial reason being that they have an - er, machine capable of travelling betweenplanets."

"Why make such a mystery of it, then?" Enid asked. "There are fairly simple tests devised for thissituation; why not apply them? Do these creatures have a written script? Do they talk with each other?Do they observe a code between themselves? Are they able to repeat a simple demonstration or a set ofgestures? Do they respond to simple mathematical concepts? What is their attitude towards humanartifacts - and, of course, have they artifacts of their own? How do -"

"Yes. yes, my dear, we entirely take your point: there are tests to be applied. I was not idle on thevoyage home; I applied the tests."

"Well, then, the results?"

"Conflicting. Conflicting in a way that suggests that the tests we applied were inefficient and insufficient- in a word, too steeped in anthropomorphism. And that is the point I was trying to make. Until we candefine intelligence more nearly, we are not going to find it easy to begin communicating."

"At the same time," Pasztor supplemented, "you are going to find it hard to define intelligence until youhave succeeded in communicating."

Ainson brushed this aside with the gesture of a practical man cutting through sophisms.



"First we define intelligence. Is the little spider,argy-roneta aquatica, intelligent because she can builda diving bell and thus live underwater? No. Very well, then these lumbering creatures may be no moreintelligent because they can construct a spaceship. On the other hand, these creatures may be so highlyintelligent, and the end-products of a civilization so ancient, that all the reasoning we conduct in ourconscious minds, they conduct in their hereditary or subconscious minds leaving their conscious mindsfree for cogitation on matters - and indeed for forms of cogitation - beyond our understanding. If that isso, communication between our species may be for ever out of the question. Remember that onedictionary definition of intelligence is simply 'information received'; if we receive no information fromthem, and they none from us, then we are entitled to say these ETA's are unintelligent."

"This is all very puzzling to me," Enid said. "You make it sound so difficult now, yet in your letters youmade it sound so simple. You said these creatures had come up and attempted to communicate with youin a series of grunts and whistles; you said they each possessed six excellent hands; you said they hadarrived on what's it -on Clementina, by spaceship. Surely the situation is clear. They are intelligent; notsimply with the limited intelligence of an animal, but intelligent enough to have produced a civilizationand a language. The only problem is to translate their noises and whistles into English."

Ainson turned to the Director.

"You understand why it isn't so easy, don't you, Mihaly?"

"Well, I have read most of your reports, Bruce. I know these are mammals with respiratory systemsand digestive tracts much like ours, that they have brains with a similar weight ratio to our own, thatpossessing hands they would approach the universe with the same basic feeling we have that matter isthere to be manipulated - no, frankly, Bruce, I can see that to learn their language or to get them to learnours may be a difficult task, but I do feel you are overestimating the hazards of the case."

"Do you? You wait till you've observed these fellows for a while. You'll feel differently. I tell you,Mihaly, I try to put myself in their place, and despite their disgusting habits I have managed to preservesympathy towards them. But the only feeling I get - amid an ocean of frustration -is that they must, if theyare intelligent at all, have a very different point of view to the universe from ours. Really, you'd imaginethey were - they were -" he gestured at them, calm behind the glass - "holding themselves aloof from me."

"We shall have to see how the linguists get on," Pasztor said. "And Bryant Lattimore of USGN FlightAdvice -he's a very forceful man - I think you'll like him - arrives from the States tomorrow. His viewswill be worth having." It was not the remark to please Bruce Ainson. He decided he had had enough ofthe subject.



"It's ten o'clock," he said. "Time Enid and I were shuttling home; you know I keep regular hours whenI'm on Earth. We've enjoyed the celebrations, Mihaly. We shall see you at the end of the week."

They shook hands with returning cordiality. Provoked by one of the bursts of mischief that ensured hewould never rise higher than his present sinecure, Sir Mihaly asked, "By the way, my friend, what was itAylmer and the girl did that so conflicted with your point of view that you threw him out of your home?"

A tinge as of dusty brick mottled Bruce Ainson's throat and jowls.

"You'd better ask him yourself; he may see fit to gratify your curiosity; I don't see him any more," hesaid stiffly. "We'll find our own way out.

The shuttle on the district line climbed upwards through a night punctuated by the city's orchestra oflights. It clung dizzily to its thread of rail. Enid closed her eyes and wished she had swallowed an Antivombefore they boarded; she was not a good traveller.

"A tubby for your thoughts," her husband said.

"I wasn't thinking, Bruce."

After a silence, Ainson said. "What were you and Mihaly talking about while I went to get your wrap?"

"I don't remember. Trivialities. Why do you ask that?"

"How much did you see of him while I was away?"

She sighed, and the noise of the air flowing past the cab drowned the small sound she made.



"You always ask me that, Bruce, after each trip. Now stop being jealous or you'll give me ideas;Mihaly is very sweet but he means nothing to me."

High above outer London, the district shuttle decanted them on to the great curled lip of the OutflankRing. Their section of the newly-built structure was crowded, so that they preserved silence as theywhirled towards the nonstop lane that would take them home. But once on the monobus, their silencecontinued to cling. Neither felt comfortable in the other's lack of speech, fearing unknown thought. Enidspoke first.

"Well, I'm glad success has come to you at last, Bruce. We must have a party. I'm very proud of you.you know!"

He patted her hand and smiled at her forgivingly, as one might to a child.

"There won't be time for parties, I'm afraid. This is when the real work begins. I shall have to be roundat the zoo every day, advising the research teams. They can't very well do without me, you know."

She stared ahead of her. She was not really disappointed; she should have expected the answer shegot. And even then, instead of showing anger, she found herself trying 'to be friendly with him, asking oneof her silly little searched-for questions.

"I suppose you are hoping very much that we can learn to talk to these creatures?"

"The government seems less excited than I had hoped. Of course I know there is this wretched waron.... Eventually there may be points emerging that prove of more importance than the language factor."

She recognized a vagueness in his phraseology he used when there was something he was unsure of.

"What sort of points?"

He stared into the rushing night.



"The wounded ETA showed a great resistance to dying. When they dissected it on theMariestopes,they cut it almost into chunks before it died. These things have a phenomenal resistance to pain. Theydon't feel pain. They don't ... feel pain! Think of it. It's all in the reports, buried in tables and written uptechnically - I've no patience with it any longer. But one day someone's going to see the importance ofthose facts."

Again she felt his silence fall like a stone from his lips as he looked past her through the window.

"You saw this creature being cut up?"

"Of course I did."

She thought about all the things that men did and bore with apparent ease.

"Can you imagine it?" Ainson said. "Never to feel any pain, physical or mental...."

They were sinking down to the local traffic level. His melancholy gaze rested on the darkness thatconcealed their home.

"What a boon to mankind!" he exclaimed.

After the Ainsons had gone. Sir Mihaly Pasztor stoodwhere he was, in a vacuity that occasionallymerged into thought. He began to pace up and down, watched by the eyes of the two alien beingsbeyond the glass. Their glance finally slowed him; he came to rest on the balls of his feet, balancing,swaying gently, regarding them with folded arms, and finally addressing them.

"My dear charges, I understand the problem, and without having met you before, I do to a certainlimited extent also understand you. Above all I understand that up until now you have only been facedwith a limited type of human mind. I know spacemen, my bag-bellied friends, for I was a spacemanmyself, and I know how the long dark years attract and mould an inflexible mind. You have been faced



with men without the human touch, men without finer perceptions, men without the gift of empathy, menwho do not readily excuse and understand because they have no knowledge of the diversity of humanhabits, men who because they have no insight into themselves are denied insight into others.

"In short, my dear and dung-stained charges, if you are civilized, then you need to be confronted by aproperly civilized man. If you are more than animal, then it should not be too long before we understandeach other. After that will be time for words to grow between us."

One of the ETA's deretracted his limbs, rose, and came over to the glass. Sir Mihaly Pasztor took it asan omen.

Going round to the back of the enclosure, he entered a small anteroom to the actual cage. Pressing abutton, he activated the part of the floor on which he stood; it moved forward into the cage, carryingbefore it a low barrier, so that the Director looked rather like a prisoner entering court in a knee-highdock. The mechanism stopped. He and the ETA's were now face to face, although a button by Pasztor'sright hand ensured that he could withdraw himself immediately, should danger threaten.

The ETA's made thin whistles and huddled together.

Their smell, while far from being as repugnant as might have been expected, was certainly verynoticeable. Mihaly wrinkled his nose.

"To our way of thought," he said, "civilization is reckoned as the distance man has placed betweenhimself and his excreta."

One of the ETA's extended a limb and scratched itself.

"We have no civilizations on Earth that are not firmly founded on an alphabet. Even the aboriginesketches his fears and hopes on the rocks. But do you have fears and hopes?"

The limb, having scratched, retracted, leaving the palm of the hand merely as a six-pointed pattern inthe flesh.



"It is impossible to imagine a creature larger than a flea without fears and hopes, or some suchequivalent structure based on pain stimuli. Good feelings and bad feelings: they get us through life, theyare our experiences of the external world. Yet if I understand the report on the autopsy of one of yourlate friends, you experience no pain. How radically that must modify your experience of the externalworld."

One of the lizard creatures appeared. It scuttled along its host's back and applied its little twinklingnose to a fold of skin. It became motionless, and all but invisible.

"And indeed, what is the external world? Since we can only know it through our senses, we can neverknow it undiluted; we can only know it as external-world-plus-senses. What is a street? To a small boy,a whole world of mystery. To a military strategist, a series of strong points and exposed positions: to alover, his beloved's dwelling place; to a prostitute, her place of business; to an urban historian, a series ofwatermarks in time; to an architect, a treaty drawn between art and necessity; to a painter, an adventurein perspective and tone; to a traveller, the location of drink and a warm bed; to the oldest inhabitant, amonument to his past follies, hopes, and hearts; to themotorist -

"How then do our external worlds, yours and mine, my enigmatic kine, clash or chine? Are we notgoing to find that somewhat difficult to discover until we have succeeded in speaking to each otherbeyond a list of nouns and needs? Or do you, with our Master Explorer, prefer the proposition reversed:do we have to grasp the nature of at least your external environment before we can parley?

"And have I not suddenly deviated into sense, sows? For might it not be that you two forlorn creaturesare merely hostages to the larger question. Perhaps we shall never communicate with either of the pair ofyou. But you are a sign that somewhere - perhaps not too many light years from Clementina - is a planetfull of your kind. If we wentthere, if we caught you in your natural haunts, then we would understand somuch more about you, would see far more precisely what we should be trying to parley about. We notonly need linguists here; we need a couple of starships searching the worlds near Clementina. I mustmake the point to Lattimore."

The ETA's did nothing.

"I warn you, man is a very persistent creature. If the external world won't come to him, he will go tothe external world. If you have vocabularies to shed, prepare to shed them now."



Their eyes had closed.

"Have you lapsed into unconsciousness or prayer? The latter would be wiser, now that you are in thehands of man."

Philosophizing was not all that went on that first night thatMariestopes rested her terrigenous bulk onEarth; there was also house-breaking.

Not that Rodney Walthamstone could help it, as his defence explained when the case came up. It wasa compulsion of a not unusual sort in these modern days, whenevery other month saw the return of shipswhich had probed into the very depths of the cosmos. Ordinary mortals sailed on those terrible - and heused the word without intending hyperbole - those terrible voyages; mortals, m'lud, like RodneyWalthamstone, upon whom space could not but have an overwhelming effect. This was well known, andhad been designated Bestar's Syndrome ten years ago (named after the celebrated psychodynami-cian,m'lud).

Out in the cosmos, all the fundamental symbols and furnishings of man's minds were lacking, brutallylacking. One did not have to agree with the French philosopher Deutch that cosmos and mind were thetwo opposed poles of the magnet of entirety to realize that space travel imposed a great strain on anyman, and that he might return to Earth with a hunger for normality that could not be satisfied through legalchannels. Granted that be so. then it was this law and not the mind of man that should be altered; manhad gone out into the infinite starry depths: it was up to the law to make itself somewhat less earthbound(laughter).

What symbol had more powerful hold over man's mind than a house, that symbol of home, of shelterfrom the hostile world, of civilization itself? So in this case of housebreaking, unfortunate though it wasthat the house owner had been coshed, the court should see that the not unheroic accused had merelybeen searching for a symbol. Of course, he admitted freely to having been slightly under the influence ofdrink at the same time, but Bestar's Syndrome allowed -

The judge, allowing that the defence had a point, said he was nevertheless tired of space ratings whocame back to Earth and treated England as if it were a bit of the undeveloped cosmos. Thirty daysbehind bars might convince the prisoner that there was a considerable difference between the two.

The court adjourned for lunch, and a Miss Florence Walthamstone was led weeping from the courtinto the nearest public house.



"Hank, honey, you aren't really going to join the Space Corps, are you? You aren't going off intospace again, are you?"

"Itold you. honey, just on a Flight-by-Flight arrangement, like I had in the Exploration Corps."

"I'll never understand you men, not if I live to be a thousand. What'sout there, that attracts you? Whatdo you get out of it?"

"Hell, it's a way of earning your living. Better than an office job, isn't it? I'm a brainy guy, honey, youdon't seem to realize, passed all my exams, but there's so much competition here in America."

"But what do youget out of it, that's what I want to know."

"I told you, I may wind up captain. Now how about letting the subject rest for a bit, hey?"

"I didn't want to talk about it."

"You didn't? WeU, who do you think did, then? Sometimes I think you and me just don't talk thesame language."

"Darling. Darling! Darling, don't you think it's time we got up now?"

"Mmm?"

"It's ten o'clock, darling."

"Mmm, Early yet."



"I'm hungry."

"I was dreaming about you, Gussie."

"We were going to get the eleven o'clock ferry across to Hong Kong, remember? You were going tosketch today, remember?"

"Mmm. Kiss me again, darling."

"Mmm. Darling."

CHAPTER SIX

Head Keeper was a sparse grey man who had recently taken to brushing his hair so that it showedunder each side of his peaked cap. He had worked under Pasztor long ago - many moons before he hadhad trouble in walking downstairs in the morning - far below the icy cliffs of the Ross Ice Shelf. His name,as it happened, was Ross, Ian Edward Tinghe Ross, and he gave Bruce Ainson a smart salute as theexplorer came up.

"Morning, Ross. How's everything this morning? I'm late."

"Big conference this morning, sir. They've only just started. Sir Mihaly is in there, of course, and thethree linguists - Dr. Bodley Temple and his two associates -and a statistician, I forget his name, little manwith a warty neck, you can't miss him, and a lady - a scientist, I believe - and that Oxford philosopheragain, Roger Wittgenbacher, and our American friend, Lattimore, and the novelist, Gerald Bone, andwho else?"



"Good Lord, that makes about a dozen! What's Gerald Bone doing here?"

"He's a friend of Sir Mihaly's, as I understand it, sir. I thought he looked a very nice man. My ownreading tastes are on the more serious side, and so I don't often read any novels, but now and againwhen I haven't been well - particularly when I had that spot of bronchitis last winter, if you remember - Ihave dipped into one or two better novels, and I must say that I was very impressed by Mr. Bone'sManyAre The Few. The hero had bad a nervous breakdown -"

"Yes, I do recall the plot, Ross, thank you. And how are our two ETA's?"

"Quite honestly, sir, I reckon they're dying of boredom, and who's to blame them!"

When Ainson entered the study room that lay behind the ETA's cage, it was to find the conference insession. Counting heads as they nodded to him in recognition, he amassed a total of fourteen males andone female. Although they were unalike in appearance, there was a feeling of something shared aboutthem: perhaps an air of authority.

This air was most noticeable about Mrs. Warhoon, if only because she was on her feet and in fullspate when Ainson arrived. Mrs. Hilary Warhoon was the lady that Head Keeper Ross had referred to.Though only in her mid-forties, she was well-known as a leading cosmo-clectic, the newphilosophico-scientific profession that attempted to sort the wheat from the chaff in the rapidlyaccumulating pile of facts and theories which represented Earth's main import from space. Ainson lookedat her with approval. To think she should be married to some dried old stick of a banker she could nottolerate! She was a fine figure of a woman, fashionable enough to be wearing one of the new chandelierstyle suits with pendants at bust, hip, and thigh level; the appeal of her face, serious though her prevalentexpression might be, was not purely intellectual; while Ainson knew for a fact that she could out-argueeven old Wittgenbacher, Oxford's professional philosopher and technivision pundit. In fact, Ainsoncould not help comparing her with his wife, to Enid's disadvantage. One, of course, would never dreamof indieating one's inner feelings to her, poor thing, or to anyone else, but really Enid was a poorspecimen; she should have married a shopkeeper in a busy country town. Banbury. Diss. East Dereham.Yes, that was about it....

"... feel that we have made progress this week, despite several handicaps inherent in the situation, mostof them stemming - as I think the Director was the first to point out - from the fact that we have nobackground to the lifeform to use as a point of reference." Mrs. Warhoon's voice was pleasantlystaccato. It scattered Ainson's thoughts and made him concentrate on what she was saying; if Enid hadbeen a bit more prompt with the breakfast, he might have got here in tune to hear the beginning of herspeech. "My colleague, Mr. Borroughs, and I have now examined the space vehicle found on



Clementina. While we are not qualified to give a technical report on it -you will be getting severaltechnical reports on it from other sources in any case - we both were convinced that it was a vehicledeveloped for, if not by, the captive life-form. You will recall that eight of the lifeforms were discoveredclose to the vehicle; and the body of a dead one was disinterred within the vehicle itself; nine bunks, orniches that by their shape and size are intended to serve as bunks, are observable within the vehicle.Because these bunks run in the direction we think of as vertical rather than horizontally, and areseparated by what we now know to be fuel lines, they have not previously been recognized as bunks.

"Here it is appropriate to mention another trouble that we come up against continually. We do notknow what is evidence and what is not.

"For instance, we now have to ask ourselves, supposing we consider it established that the lifeform hasdeveloped space travel: can space travel be regarded asa priori proof of superior intelligence?"

"That is the most penetrating question I have heardasked in the last decade," said Wittgenbacher,nodding his head six times with the frightening assurance of a clockwork doll. "If it were posed to themasses, they would give you but one answer, or should I rather say that their many answers would takebut one form. They would render an affirmative. We who are here may reckon ourselves moreenlightened and would perhaps choose as a more valid example of superior intelligence the works of theanalytical philosophers, where logic flows unconfused with emotion. But the masses - and who perhapsamongst us in the final analysis is to gainsay them? - would, if I may employ a colloquialism, plump for aproduct in which the hands as well as the mind had been employed. I do not doubt that among such acategory of products the spaceship would appear to them the most outstanding."

"I'd go along with them," said Lattimore. He sat next to Pasztor, sucking the frame of his spectaclesand listening intently.

"I might even accompany them myself," chuckled Wittgenbacher, with more mechanical nods. "But thisdoes raise another question. Suppose that, having granted this lifeform, so unaesthetically unhygienic inmany of its habits, superior intelligence; suppose we later discover its planet of origin, and then perceivethat its - um, its space-going ability is as much governed by instinctual behaviour as is the ocean-goingability of our northern fur-seals. Perhaps you will correct me if I am in error, Sir Mihaly, but I believe thattheArctocephalus ursinus, the bear seal, makes a winter migration of many thousands of miles from theBering Sea down to the shores of Mexico, where I have seen them myself when swimming in the Gulf ofCalifornia.

"If we find this to be so, then not only shall we be in error in presuming superior intelligence in ourfriends, but we shall have to ask ourselves this: is it not possible that our own space travel is equally theoutcome ofinstinctual behaviour, and - much as the fur-seal may imagine on his swim south that his travel



is prompted by his own will - may we not be pushed by an unglimpsed purpose beyond our own?"

Three reporters at the back of the room scribed busily, ensuring that tomorrow'sTimes, recording thelongueurs of the conference, would pinpoint this highlight in a headline readingSpace Travel: Man'sMigratory Pattern ?

Gerald Bone stood up. The novelist's face had lit at the new thought like a child's at sight of a new toy.

"Do I understand you. Professor Wittgenbacher, to imply that we - that our much-vaunted intelligence,the one thing that most clearly distinguishes us from the animals, may really be no more than a blindcompulsion driving us in its own directions rather than in ours?"

"Why not? For all our pretensions to the arts and the humanities, our race ever since the Renaissanceat least has directed its main efforts towards the twin goals of expanding its numbers and expandingoutwards." Having got the bit between his teeth, the old philosopher was not going to stop there. "In factyou may liken our leaders to the queen bee who prepares her hive to swarm and does not know why shedoes it. We swarm into space and do not know why we do it. Something drives -"

But he was not going to get away with it. Lattimore was the first to vent a hearty "Nonsense", and Dr.Bodley Temple and his assistants made unsavoury noises of dissent. All round the room, the professorwas given the cultural catcall.

"Preposterous theory -"

"Economic possibilities inherent in -"

"Even a techni audience would hardly -"

"I suppose the colonization of other planets -"

"One just cannot dismiss the diciplines of science -"



"Order, please," called the Director.

In the following lull, Gerald Bone called another question to Wittgenbacher, "Then where shall we findtrue intellect?"

"Perhaps when we run up against our gods," Wittgenbacher replied, not at all put out by the heatedatmosphere about him.

"We will have the linguistic report now," Pasztor said sharply, and Dr. Bodley Temple rose, rested hisright leg on the chair in front of him, rested his right elbow on his knee, so that he leant forward with anappearance of eagerness, and did not budge from that position until he had finished talking. He was asmall stocky man with a screw of grey hair rising from the middle of his forehead and a pugnaciousexpression. He had the reputation of being a sound and imaginative scholar, and offset it with some of thenattiest waistcoats in London University. His present one, negotiating a considerable stretch of abdomen,was of antique brocade with a pattern of Purple Emperor butterflies chasing themselves about thebuttons.

"You all know what the job of my team is," he said, in a voice that Arnold Bennett would haverecognized a century back as having sprung from the Five Towns. "We're trying to learn the alien tonguewithout knowing if they have one, because that's the only way there is to find out. We have made someprogress, as my colleague Wilfred Brebner here will demonstrate in a moment.

"First, I'll make a few general remarks. Our visitors, these fat chaps from Clementina, don't understandwhat writing is. They have no script. That doesn't mean anything with regard to their language - manyAfrican negro languages were only reduced to writing by white missionaries. Efik and Yoruba were twosuch languages of the Sudanic language group; almost unused languages now, I'd say.

" I tell you all this, my friends, because until I get a better idea, I'm treating these aliens as a couple ofAfricans. It may bring results. It's more positive than treating them as animals - you may recall that thefirst white explorers in Africa thought the negroes were gorillas - and it ensures that if we find they dohave a language, then we won't make the mistake of expecting it to follow anything like a Romancepattern.

"I am certain that our fat friends have a language - and you gents of the Press can quote me there, if



you like. You've only got to listen to them snorting together. And it isn't all snorts. We've now analysed itfrom tapes and have sorted out five hundred different sounds. Though it may be that many of thesesounds are the same sound delivered at a different pitch. You may know that there are terrestrial linguisticsystems such as - er. Siamese and Cantonese which employ six acoustic pitches. And we can expectmany more pitches with these fellows, who obviously range very freely over the sound spectrum.

"The human ear is deaf to vibrations of frequency greater than somewhere about 24,000 a second.We have found that these chaps can go twice that, just as a terrestrial bat or a Rungstedian cat can. Soone problem is that if we are to converse with them, we must get them to stay within our wavelength. Forall we know, that may mean they would have to invent a sort of pidgin language that we couldunderstand."

"I protest," said the statistician, who until now had been content to do little but run his tongue round histeeth. "You are now inferring, surely, that we are inferior to them."

"I'm saying nothing of the kind. I'm saying that their range of sound is very much greater than ours.Now, Mr. Brebner here is going to give us a few of the phonemes that we have provisionally identified."

Mr. Brebner rose and stood swaying beside the stocky figure of Bodley Temple. He was in hismid-twenties, a slight figure with pale yellow hair, wearing a light greysuit with the hood down. His facewas suffused a delicate flame colour with the embarrassment of confronting his audience, but he spoke upwell.

"The dissections on the dead aliens have told us quite a lot about their anatomy," he said. "If you haveread the rather lengthy report, you will know that our friends have three distinct classes of aperturesthrough which they produce their characteristic noises. All these noises appear to contribute to theirlanguage, or we assume they do, just as we assume they have a language.

"First, they have in one of their heads a mouth, to which is linked a scent organ. Although this mouth isused for breathing, its main function is feeding and making what we term the oral sounds.

"Secondly, our friends have six breathing vents, three on either side of their body, and situated abovetheir six limbs. At present we refer to these as the nostrils. They are labiate apertures and althoughunconnected to any vocal chords - as is the mouth - these nostrils produce a wide range of sounds.



"Thirdly, our friends also produce a variety of controlled sound through the rectum situated in theirsecond head.

"Their form of speech consists of sound transmitted through all these apertures, either in turn, or anytwo together, or all three classes together, or all eight apertures together. You will see then that the fewsounds I am now going to give you as examples are limited to the less complex ones. Tape recordings ofthe whole range are of course available, but are not in a very manageable form as yet. "The first word isnnnnorrrr- INK."

To pronounce this word, Wilfred Brebner ran a light snore over the front of his throat and chased itwith the little squeak represented here as "ink". (All printed forms of the alien language used throughoutthis book aresimilarly to be treated as mere approximations.)

Brebner continued with his exposition.

"Nnnnorrrr-INKis the word we have obtained several times in various contexts. Dr. Bodley Templerecorded it first last Saturday, when he brought our friends a fresh cabbage. We obtained it a secondtime on Saturday when I took out a packet of chewing plastic and gave pieces to Dr. Temple and toMike. We did not hear it again till Tuesday afternoon, when it was pronounced in a situation when foodwas not present. Chief Keeper Ross had entered the cage where we were to see if we needed anything,and both creatures made the sound at the same time. We then noted that the word might have a negativeconnotation, since they had refused the cabbage, and had not been offered the chew - which they wouldpresume to be food - and might be supposed not to like Ross, who disturbs them when he cleans outtheir cage. Yesterday, however, Ross brought them a bucket of river mud. which they like, and then werecordednnnnorrrr- INKagain, several times in five minutes. So we think at present that it refers to somevariety of human activity: appearing bearing something, shall we say. The meaning will be fined downconsiderably as we go along. From this example you can see the process of elimination we go throughwith every sound.

"The bucket of river mud also brought forth another word we can recognize. This sounds like WHIP-bwut-bwip(a small whistle followed by two pouting labials). We have also heard it when grapefruit hasbeen accepted, when porridge with sliced banana in - a dish over which they show some enthusiasm -has been accepted, and when Mike and I have been leaving in the evening. We take it therefore to be asign of approval.

"We also think we have a sign of disapproval, although we have only heard it twice. Once it wasaccompanied by a gesture of disapproval, when an under-keeper caughtone of our friends on the snoutwith a jet of water from a hose. On the other occasion, we had offered them fish, some cooked, someraw. As you are aware, they seem to be vegetarians. The sound was -"



Brebner glanced apologetically at Mrs. Warhoon as he blew a series of damp farts with his mouth,culminating with an open-mouthed groan.

"Bbbp-bbbp-bbbp-bbbp-aaaah."

"It certainly sounds like disapproval," Temple said.

Before the ripple of amusement died, one of the reporters said, "Dr. Temple, is this all you have tooffer in the way of progress?"

"You have been given a rough guide to what we are doing."

"But you don't seem to have a single one of their words definitely. Why couldn't you tackle what anylayman would think would be the first steps, like getting them to count, and to name parts of their bodiesand yours? Then at least you have something to begin on, rather than a few abstracts like 'Appearingcarrying something'."

Temple looked down at the Purple Emperors on his waistcoat, munched his lips, and then said,"Young man, a layman might indeed think those were the first steps. But my answer to that layman and toyou is that such a catalogue is only possible if the enemy - the alien is prepared to open up aconversation. These two buggers - I beg your pardon, madam - these two fellows have no interest incommunicating with us."

"Why don't you get a computer on the job?"

"Your questions grow more foolish. You need common-sense on a job like this. What damned goodwould a computer be? It can't think, nor can it differentiate between two almost identical phonemes forus. All we need is time. You can't imagine - nor can your hypothetical layman -the difficulties that besetus, mainly because we are having to think in a realm where man has not had to think before.



Ask yourself this: whatis language? And the answer is, human speech. Therefore we aren't just doingresearch, we "are inventing something new: non-human speech."

The reporter nodded glumly, Dr. Temple huffed and puffed and sat down, Lattimore rose. He perchedhis spectacles on the end of his nose and clasped his hands behind his back.

"As you know, Doctor, I'm new around here, so I hope you'll appreciate I ask my questions in allinnocence. My position is this. I'm a sceptic. I know that we have investigated only three hundredplanets in this universe, and I know that leaves a tidy few million to go. but I still hold that three hundredis a fair sampling. None of them have yielded any form of life half as intelligent as my Siamese cat. Thissuggests to me that man is unique in the universe."

"It should be no stronger than a suggestion." Temple said.

" Nor is it. Now, I don't give a row of pins if there is no other form of intelligent life in the universe;man has always been on his own, and that won't worry him. On the other hand, if some other intelligentform of human turns up elsewhere, then I'll welcome it as readily as the next man - provided it behavesitself.

"What sticks in my gullet is when someone brings back this couple of overgrown hogs that wallow intheir own filth in a way no self-respecting Earth pig would do. given the option, and insists that we try andprove that they are intelligent people! It's just crazy. You yourself said that these hogs show no interest intrying to communicate with us. Very well. then, isn't that a sign that they have no intelligence? Who in allthis room can honestly say they would want these hogs in their own house?"

Uproar broke out again. Everyone turned and argued, not merely with Lattimore, but with each other.Finally it was Mrs. Warhoonss voice that rode over the rumpus.

"I have a great deal of sympathy with your position, Mr. Lattimore, and I am very glad you haveconsented to come down and sit in on our meeting. But the brief answer" to you is that, as life takes amultitude of different forms, so we should expect intelligence to take differing forms.

We cannot conceive a differing form of intelligence. We only know that it would widen the boundariesof our thought and understanding in a way that nothing else could. Therefore, when we think we havefound such intelligence, we must make sure, even if the effort takes us years."



"That is part of my point, madam," Lattimore said. "If intelligence were there, it would not take usyears to detect We should recognize it right away, even if it came disguised as a turnip."

"How do you account for the space ship on Clementina?'" Gerald Bone asked.

"I don't have to account for it! These big hogs should be able to account for it If they built it, then whydon't they draw pictures of it when they're given pencils and paper?"

"Because they travel in it doesn't mean to say they built it."'

"Can you imagine the lowest dumbest rating on an Earth cruiser getting captured by aliens and thenbeing unable to draw a picture of his ship when they brought him pencil and paper?"

Brebner asked, "And their language, how do you account for that?"

"I enjoyed your animal imitations, Mr. Brebner," Lattimore said good-humouredly. "But frankly, Iconverse more readily with my cat than you do with those two hogs."

Ainson spoke for the first time. He spoke sharply, annoyed that a mere interloper should be belittlinghis discovery.

"This is all very well, Mr. Lattimore, but you are dismissing too much too easily. We know the ETA'shave certain habits that are unpleasant by our standards. But they don't behave together like animus; theyprovide companionship for each other. They converse. And the spaceship is there, whatever you maysay."

"Maybe the spaceship is there. But what is the connection between the hogs and it? We don't know.They may well be just the livestock that the real space travellers took along for food. I don't know; butyou don't know either, and you are avoiding the obvious explanation. Frankly, if I were in charge of thisoperation, I'd pass a hefty vote of censure on the captain of theMariestopes and more particularly on



his Master Explorer for carrying out such a sloppy piece of investigation on the spot"

At this, there was a sort of ominous and uneasy ground-swell about the room. Only the reportersbegan to look a little happier. Sir Mihaly leant forward and explained to Lattimore who Ainson was.Lattimore pulled a long face.

"Mr. Explorer Ainson, I fear I owe you an apology for having failed to recognize you. If you'd beenhere before the meeting began, we could have been introduced."

"Unfortunately, this morning my wife -"

"But I must absolutely stick to what I said. The report on what happened on Clementina is pathetic inits amateurishness. Your stipulated week's reconnoitre of the planet was expired when you found theseanimals beside the spaceship, and rather than depart from schedule you just shot up the majority of them,took a few technishots of the scene, and blasted off. This ship, for all you know, may have been theequivalent of a cattle truck, with the cattle out to wallow, while two miles away in another valley was thereal ship, with real bipeds like us, people -just like Mrs. Warhoon says - that we'd give our eyes and eyeteeth to communicate with, and vice versa, you can be sure.

"No, I'm sorry. Mr. Ainson. but your committees here are more bogged down than they care to admit,simply because of bad field work on your part."

Ainson had grown very red. Something ghastly had happened in the room. The feeling had goneagainst him. Everyone - he knew it without looking at them - everyone was sitting in silent approval ofwhat Lattimore said.

"Any idiot can be wise after the event," he said. "You seem to fail to realize how unprecedented it allwas. I -"

"I do realize how unprecedented it all was. I'm saying that it was unprecedented, and that thereforeyou should have been more thorough. Believe me. Mr. Ainson, I've read photostats of the report on theexpedition and I've scrutinized the photographs that were taken, and I have the impression that the wholething was conducted more like a big game hunt than an official expedition paid for with public money."



"I was not responsible for the shooting of the six ETA's. A patrol ran into them, coming back to theship late. It went to investigate the aliens, they attacked and were shot in self-defence. You shouldre-read the reports."

"These hogs show no sign of being vicious. I don't believe that they attacked the patrol. I think theywere trying to run away."

Ainson looked about for help.

"I appeal to you, Mrs. Warhoon, is it reasonable to try and guess how these aliens behaved in theirfree state from a glance at their apathetic behaviour in captivity?"

Mrs. Warboon had formed an immediate admiration for Bryant Lattimore; she liked a strong man.

"What other means have we for judging their behaviour?" she asked.

"You have the reports, that's what. There is a full account there for you to study."

Lattimore returned to the attack.

"What we have in the reports, Mr. Ainson, is a summary of what the leader of the patrol told you. Ishe a reliable man?"

"Reliable? Yes, he is reliable enough. There is a war on in this country, you know, Mr. Lattimore, andwe can't always choose the men we want"

"I see. And what was this man's name?"



And indeed what was his name? Young, beefy, rather sullen. Not a bad fellow. Horton? Halter? In acalmer atmosphere he would remember at once. Controlling his voice, Ainson said, "You will find hisname in the written report."

"All right, all right, Mr. Ainson. Obviously you have your answers. What I'm saying is that you shouldhave returned with a lot more answers. You see you are something of a keyman here, aren't you?You're the Master Explorer. You were trained up to just this situation. I'd say you have made it verydifficult for all of us by producing inadequate or even conflicting data."

Lattimore sat down, leaving Ainson standing.

"The nature of the data is to be conflicting," Ainson said. "Your job is to make sense of it, not to rejectit. Nobody is to blame. If you have any complaints, then they must be forwarded to Captain Bargerone.Captain Bargerone was in charge of the whole thing, not I. Oh, and Quilter was the name of the fellow incharge of the patrol. I've just remembered."

Gerald Bone spoke without rising.

"As you know, I'm a novelist, Mr. Ainson. Perhaps in this distinguished company I should say 'only anovelist'. But one thing has worried me about your part in this.

"Mr. Lattimore says that you should have returned from Clementina with more answers than you did.However that may be, it does seem to me that you have returned with a few assumptions which,because they have come from you, have been accepted all round without challenge as fact."

With dry mouth, Ainson waited for what was to come. Again he was aware that everyone waslistening with a sort of predatory eagerness.

"We know that these ETA's were found by a river on Clementina. Everyone also seems to accept thatthey are not natives of that planet As far as I can see, this notion began with you. Is that so?"

The question was a relief. This Ainson could answer.



"The notion did begin with me, Mr. Bone, though I would call it a conclusion rather than a notion. I canexplain it easily, even to a layman. These ETA's belonged to the ship; be quite clear about that Theirexcreta was caked all over the inside of it - a computed thirty days' accumulation of it As additionalevidence, the ship was clearly built in their image."

"TheMariestopes, you might say, is built in the image of the common dolphin. It proves nothing aboutthe shape of the engineers who designed it."

"Please be courteous enough to hear me out. We found no other mammalian type life of 12B -Clementina, as it is now called. We found no animal life larger than a two-inch tail-less lizard and noinsect life larger than a type of bee as big as a common shrew. In a week, with stratospheric surveys dayand night you cover a planet pretty thoroughly from pole to equator. Excluding the fish in the seas, wediscovered that Clementina had no animal life worth mentioning - except these big creatures that turn thescales at twenty Earth stones. And they were together in one group by the spaceship. Clearly it is anabsurdity to suppose them to be natives."

"You found them beside a river. Why should they not be an aquatic animal, possibly one that spendsmost of its time at sea?"

Ainson opened and shut his mouth. "Sir Mihaly, this discussion naturally raises points that a layman canhardly be expected... I mean, no purpose is served...."

"Quite so," agreed Pasztor. "All the same, I think Gerald has an interesting point. Do you feel we candefinitely rule out the possibility that these fellows are" aquatic?"

"As I've said, they came from the spaceship. That was absolutely conclusive, you have my word for itas the man on the spot." As he spoke, Ainson's eye went belligerently over the group; when it metLattimore's eye, Lattimore spoke.

"I would say they had the lines of a marine animal -speaking purely as a layman, of course."

"Perhaps they are aquatic on their own planet, but that has no bearing on what they were doing onClementina," Ainson said. "Whatever you say, their spaceship is a spaceship, and consequently we have



intelligence on our hands."

Mihaly came to his rescue then, and called for the next report, but it was obvious that a vote of noconfidence had been passed on Master Explorer Ainson.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The sun, as its inalienable custom was, went to bed at sunset. At the same time, Sir Mihaly Pasztorput on a dinner jacket and went to meet the guests he had invited to dine at his flat. This was a monthafter the dismal meeting at the zoowhen Bruce Ainson had received the intellectual equivalent of a flea inhis ear.

Since then, the situation could not be said to have unproved. Dr. Bodley Temple had accumulated animpressive hoard of alien phonemes, none of which had a certain English equivalent. Lattimore hadamplified in print the views he had expressed at the meeting. Gerald Bone -traitorously, thought Pasztor -had done a malicious little skit on the meeting forPunch.

These were but pin-pricks. The fact was, there was no progress being made. There was no progressbeing made chiefly because the aliens, imprisoned in their hygienic cell, showed no interest in the humans,nor any wish to co-operate in any of the stunts the humans devised. This disobliging attitude had its effecton the research team trying to deal with them; their increasing moroseness became increasinglypunctuated with bouts of self-pitying oration, as if, like a Communist millionaire, they felt impelled toexplain a position of some delicacy.

The general public, too, reacted adversely to the alien cold shoulder. The intelligent man in the streetcould have appreciated an intelligent alien, no matter what his shape, as a new distraction to competewith the world series, the grim news from Charon, where Brazil seemed to be winning the war, or theleaping taxes that were a natural concomitant to both war and TP travel. Gradually the queues thatstood all day to see the aliens in the afternoon dwindled away (after all, they didn't move about much,and they looked not so very different from terrestrial hippos, and you weren't allowed to throw nuts atthem in case it turned out they really lived in skyscrapers back home) and went back to their old routineof watching instead the Pinfold III primaritals, which indulged in a form of group intercourse every houron the hour.



Pasztor was, as it happened, thinking of intercourse as he ushered his guest, Mrs. Hilary Warhoon,into hismodest dining-closet; or if not thinking of it, reviewing with a whimsical smile at his ownweaknesses the fantasies with which he had indulged himself half an hour before Mrs. Warhoon's arrival.But no, she was not quite enchanting enough, and Mr. Warhoon by repute was too powerful andspiteful, and anyhow Sir Mihaly no longer had the zest necessary to carry off one of those illicit affairs -even though "illicit" was one of the more alluring words in the English language.

She sat down at the table and sighed.

"It's wonderful to relax. I've had a vile day."

"Busy?"

"I've made work. But I've accomplished nothing. And I'm oppressed by a sense of failure."

"You, Hilary? You are far from being a failure."

"I was thinking of it less in a personal than in a general or racial sense. Do you want me to elaborate?I'd like to elaborate."

He held up his hands in playful protest.

"My idea of civilized intercourse is not to repress but to bring forth, to elaborate. I have never beenother than interested in what you have to say."

There were three globular table ovens standing on the table. As she began to speak, he opened therefrigerated drawers on his right and began to put their contents into the ovens to cook: Fera de Travers,the salmon of Lake Geneva, to begin with, to be followed by eland steaks flown that morning from thefarms of Kenya with, to add a touch of the exotic, fingertips, the Venusian asparagus.



"When I say I'm oppressed by a general failure," Mrs. Warhoon said, attacking a dry sherry, "I'm fullyaware that it sounds rather pretentious. 'Who am I among so many?', as Shaw once said in a differentcontext. It's the old problems of definitions, with which the aliens have confronted us in dramatic newguise. Perhaps we cannot converse with them until we have decided for ourselveswhat constitutescivilization. Don't raise that suave eyebrow at me. Mihaly; I know civilization does not consist of lyingindolent in one's own droppings - though it's possible that if we had a guru here he would tell us it did.

"When you take any one quality by which we measure civilization, you will find it missing from variouscultures. Take the whole question of crime. For over a century, we have recognized crime as a symptomof sickness or un-happiness. Once we recognized that in practice as well as theory, crime statisticsdropped dramatically for the first time. But in many periods of high civilization, life imprisonment wascustomary, heads fell like petals. Certainly kindness or understanding or mercy are not signs ofcivilization, any more than war and murder are signs of the lack of it.

"As for the arts that we rightly cherish, they were all practised by prehistoric man."

"This argument is familiar to me from my undergraduate days." Sir Mihaly said, as he served thesalmon. "Yet still we cook our food and eat according to rules with carefully wrought utensils." Hepoured some wine. "Still we choose our vintages and exercise our judgments and our prejudices overthat choice." He offered her a basket full of warm crisp rolls. "Still we sit together, male and female, andmerely converse."

'Tin not denying. Mihaly, that you keep a good table, or that you have failed as yet to throw me on thefloor. But this meal - and I cast no aspersions - is now an anachronism, and strongly disapproved of by agovernment pushing the new poison-free man-made foods and drinks. Besides, this lovely meal is theend product of a number of factors that have only a nodding acquaintance with true civility. I mean thefishers crouching in their boats, the farmers sweating through their gracing land, the barb in the mouth, theshot in the head, the chains of middlemen less tolerable than farmers or fishers, theorganizations thatprepare or can or pack, the transport firms, the financiers - Mihaly, you're laughing at me!"

"Ah, you're talking of all this organization with such disapproval. I approve.Vive l'organisation! Andlet me remind you that the new synthetic food plants are triumphs of organization. Last century, as yousay, they didn't approve of prisons, but they had them, nevertheless; this century we have becomeorganized, and we don't have prisons. Last century, indeed, they didn't approve of war. yet they hadthree bouncing big ones, in 1914, in 1939, and in 1969; this century we have become organized, and wehold our wars on .Charon, the farthest planet, out of harm's way. If that's not civilization, I accept itreadily as a substitute."

"So we all do. But it may only be a substitute, man's substitute. Notice that whatever we do, it is at



someone else's or something else's expense."

"I gratefully accept their sacrifice. How will you have your steak, Hilary?"

"Oh, overdone, please. I can't quite bear the thought of it being real blood and animal tissue. All I'mtrying to say is that our civilization may be built not on our best, but on our worst: on fear - other people'sif not our own -or on greed. Can I pour you some more wine? And perhaps another species may haveanother idea of civilization, built on a sympathy for, an empathy with, all other living things. Perhaps thesealiens -"

He pressed the spin stud in the oven pedestal. The porcelain and glass hemisphere slid into the bronzehemisphere. He retrieved the steaks. The aliens again! Ah, but Mrs. Warhoon was off form tonight! Theplatemaker coughed out two warm plates, and he served her moodily, without taking in what she wassaying. Enlightened self-interest, he thought; that was the most you could or should expect from anyone;once you met an altruist, you had to beware a sick man or a scoundrel. Perhaps peoplelike Mrs.Warhoon, who wouldn't face the fact, were sick too, and ought to be encouraged to enter mental therapyhomes, like criminals and hot gospellers. Once you started questioning fundamentals, like a man's right toeat good red meat if he could afford it, then you were in trouble, even if you cared to think of that troubleas enlightenment.

"By the standards of another species," Mrs. Warhoon was saying, "our culture might merely seem likea sickness. It may be that sickness which prevents us from seeing how we ought to communicate withthe aliens, rather than any shortcoming of theirs."

"It's an interesting theory, Hilary. You may have a chance to turn it into practice on a large scaleshortly."

"Oh, indeed? You don't mean that some other ship has found more aliens at large in the universe, doyou?"

"Nothing quite so fortunate as that. I received a long letter from Lattimore yesterday morning, whichwas partly why I invited you here this evening. The Americans, as you know, are very interested in ourETA's. We have had a constant stream of them to the Exozoo over the last month. They are convinced,and I am sure Lattimore has convinced them, that things are not being run as efficiently as they might be.Lattimore wrote to say that their new stellar exploration ship,Gansas, has been re-routed, though there-routing is not official yet. Its investigation of the Crab Nebula is postponed. Instead, it will be headingfor Clementina, to search for the home planet of the ETA's."



Mrs. Warhoon put her knife and fork together, raised her eyebrows, and said, " What?"

"Lattimore will be on the flight in an advisory capacity. His meeting with you much impressed him andhe earnestly hopes that you will come along on the flight as chief cosmoclectic. He asked me to put in agood word for him before he gets in touch with you direct."

Mrs. Warhoon let her shoulders sag and leaned forward between the Scandinavian candelabras. "Goodness," she said. Her cheeks became red; in the candlelight she looked thirty again.

"He says you will not be the only woman on the flight. He also gives a rough indication of the salary,which will be fabulous. You ought to go. Hilary. It's a splendid opportunity."

She put an elbow on the table and rested her forehead on her hand. He thought it a theatrical gesture,even while seeing that she was genuinely moved and excited. His earlier fantasies returned to him.

"Space! You know I've been no farther abroad than Venus. You know it would wreck my marriage,Mihaly. Alfred would never forgive me."

"I'm sorry. I understood your marriage was a marriage in name only."

Her eyes rested blankly on a framed infra red photograph of Conquest Canyon. Pluto. She drainedher wineglass.

"It doesn't matter. I can't - or possibly will not - save it. To leave in theGansas would make a cleanbreak withthe past. Thank goodness that in that sphere at least we are more civilized than ourgrandparents, and have no involved divorce laws. Should I go on theGansas, Mihaly? I should,shouldn't I? You know there are few men I would as readily take advice from as you."

The curve of her wrist, the uncertain glimmer of candlelight in her hair, had helped him to make up hismind. He rose, went round the table, and placed his hands on her bare shoulders.



"You owe it to yourself, Hilary. You know it is not only a golden professional opportunity; these days,we are not adult humans until we have faced ourselves in deep space."

"Nuh ah, Mihaly, I know your reputation, and on the techni you promised you would take me to thenew play.

Oughtn't we to be on our way?" She turned in her chair, away from him, so that he was forced toretreat. With as good a grace as he could muster, he suggested that they might walk, as the theatre wasonly just round the corner and it was impossible, in this war year, to catch taxis after dark.

"I'll go and put a new face on and prepare myself for the street," she said, retreating into the littletoileteer that most expensive flats boasted these days. Secure behind the locked door, she surveyed herface in a mirror. She saw, not without satisfaction, that a slight flush spread over her cheeks. It was notthe first time that Mihaly had tried something of this sort; she was not going to yield while it was wellknown that he had an Oriental mistress; because she was away on holiday at present was no reason toaccept the post of substitute.

Men led enviable lives. They could pursue whims more easily than women. But here she had a chanceto pursue something stronger than a whim: the desire to see distant planets. That that fascinating manLattimore, Bryant Lattimore, would be on theGansas too was an incidental, but one that made theprospect more exciting.

Daintily, she raised first her left arm, then her right, and sniffed. Okay there, but she gave it a burst ofdeodorant for luck.

Those little armpit glands were the only ones in the human body designed to produce smell, although anumber of other glands and juices and secretions emitted it incidentally. The Japanese and some of theChinese did not have that special gland; or if they did it was considered a pathological condition.Strange; she must ask Mihaly about it - he should know; his mistress was reputed to be Japanese orChinese.

As she let her thoughts ramble and applied powder, she watched the flush fade from her cheeks.Perhaps it had been caused not by emotion but by the meat-of-animal shead consumed. She inspectedthe little white teeth arranged behind her red lips, liking the savagery of her smile.



"Grr, you little carnivore!" she whispered. She treated herself to a suspicion of perfume, an exclusiveperfume that contained ambergris which (she hastily censored the image) is the undigested remnant ofsquid and octopus found in the intestines of the spermaceti whale. She touched up her hair, clipped onher street mask, and whisked superbly out to greet Pasztor.

He had already clipped his mask on. Together, they went down into the street.

War had not improved the city. Whereas other cities in other nations had long ago banished - or atleast brought in legislation to deal with - various metropolitan abuses, London suffered under amultiplication of them.

Ash and rubbish bins stood all along the pavement, while the gutters were full of litter. The shortage ofunskilled labour was crippling the city. This shortage had caused some streets to be closed to traffic, fortheir surfaces had become impassable, and there was nobody to repair them. Many people saw little toregret in this, for to pedestrians any relief from the heaving hooting traffic was welcome. As Mihalywalked along with Mrs. War-boon, he sardonically said thanks for such gifts to civilization as their streetmasks, which alone guaranteed that they did not fall swooning from the waste gases pouring out of thecars snorting at their elbows.

Gigantic hoardings, covering a site where an office block had burnt down before a fire engine couldcrawl four blocks to save it. announced that Holidays At Home were Fun, as well as being in the nationalinterest; that Death could be turned to Financial Account by bequeathing one's body to Burgess's BodyChemicals; and that Gonorrhoea was Out of Control, with a graph to prove it, by courtesy of the WorldGonorrhoea Year. There was also a smaller poster issued byminigag, the Ministry ofGastronomy andAgriculture, proclaiming that animal foods caused premature ageing and that man-made foods containedno toxics; the point was rammed deftly home by two pictures, one of an old man having a heart attack,one of a young girl having a synthash.

Mercifully, most of this townscape was wrapped in a decent obscurity, since power cuts imposedsemi-blackouts on the capital's gaiety every night.

"Walking here, I can hardly think of walking on a different planet," Mrs. Warhoon said.

"You certainly don"t get much sight of the universe here," Pasztor said, speaking above the snarl of



engines.

"In another two or three centuries, mankind will have a different outlook on life and the rules by whichhe lives. He will have digested the universe into his art, architecture, customs, everything. As yet we'readolescents. The city's our savage playground." She gestured at a shop window exhibiting one enormousmotor bike, shaped like a system-ship and glittering like El Dorado. "It's a place where we undergoperpetual initiation rites, ordeals by fire, crowds, and gas. We aren't mature enough to deal with yourETA's."

With a shock. Mihaly thought, "My God, she's tight! We drank real wine and she's probably used tosynth-wine...." She went on talking, even when he clutched her arm so that she would not trip over theold newspapers blowing about their feet

"We started wrongly with those creatures, Mihaly, by making them adhere to our rules instead ofstudying theirs. Perhaps theGansas will find more of them and we will have another chance to makecontact, on their terms."

"As yet we don't know what their terms are. Should we respect their inclination to live in their ownwaste products? We could let them accumulate this - er, matter, as they seem disposed to do. Youknow I suggested that. But it is - well, it's malodorous, and poor old Bodley and hisstaff have to work inthere with them...."

He was glad to get her to the theatre.

The play was a jolly send-up of the Cold War era. a non-musical version ofWest Side Story, played inquaint pre-World War III costume. Both Pasztor and Mrs. War-boon enjoyed it; but her mind keptdrifting back to the prospect of making vacuum with theGansas, so that in the interval Pasztor threwhimself into the free-for-all struggle round the theatre bar rather than let her start another discussion. Asthey came out of the theatre at the end of the play, she insisted she must go home, and he competed withevening dresses and uniforms to cram into one of the sinkers that rose to connect with the district shuttle.It had rained during their incarceration, clearing the city air somewhat Drops of oily water splashed onthem from the overhead rail; still Mrs. Warhoon stuck bravely to her subject

"Do you remember Wittgenbacher's saying that our intelligence might merely be an instinct for space?"



"I have thought about it," he said, elbowing forward.

"Do you think I'll be following my instinct if I join theGansas?"

He looked at her, tall and still fairly slender, her eyes attractive over her mask.

"What's wrong with you this evening. Hilary? What do you want me to say to you?"

"You could tell me for instance whether I am going into deep space to integrate myself - to becomematured away from my womb world and all that sort of thing - or whether I am doing it to flee from anunsatisfactory marriage I would be better employed mending."

A man in astrogator's uniform wedged behind her looked at her in sudden interest as he caught part ofthis remark.

"I don't know you well enough to answer that," Mihaly said.

"Nobody does." She spoke the words dismissively, smiling, for he had finally got her to the doors ofthe sinker. She touched his fingers and passed in. Pasztor had to fight not to be carried in as well.

The doors closed, the pellet was sucked up its tube. He watched its lights rise up to the level of themonobus rail. A globule of water splashed into his left eye. He turned and made his way home throughemptying streets.

Back in his flat over the Exozoo, he walked about aimlessly, thinking. Clearing the remains of theirmeal away, he swept cutlery and dishes from the dining-table into the disposer, watching soft flame riseas they disintegrated. Then he resumed his pacing.

Hilary had a grain of truth among her chaff, though earlier in the evening he had mentally labelled itsickness. Wasn't truth a sickness man spent a lifetime seeking, just as a dog seeks the coarse grass thatmakes it vomit? What was that epigram that he had trotted forth too often, about civilization being the



distance man placed between himself and his excreta? But it was nearer the truth to say that civilizationwas the distance man had placed between himself and everything else, for cradled deep in the conceptof culture was the need for privacy. Once away from the hurly-burly of camp fires, man invented rooms,barriers, behind which he developed his most characteristic practices. Meditation arose from mereabstraction, the individual arts arose from folk crafts, love arose from sex. the concept of the individualarose from the tribe.

But were the barriers valuable when one faced another culture? And again, mightn't one of thedifficulties with coming to grips with ETA's be that you hardly realized how strong a hold the mores ofyour own culture had on you?

It was, Pasztor thought, what might be called a Good Question, and damn it, he would act on it now.

He took the lift down to the ground floor. The Exozoowas dark about him; only the simultaneouslyshrill and deep chuckle of a stone-cracker in the High-G House sent a shiver through the darkness. Man,shut in his culture, so anxious to imprison other animals with him....

The two ETA's were seemingly asleep as he entered and the pallid lights came on. One of the lizardcreatures took a flying leap back into the arm socket of its protector, but the big bulk did not stir.

Pasztor moved through the side door and so came into the back of the cage. He unlocked the lowbarrier and walked up to the ETA's. They opened their eyes with what looked like infinite weariness.

"Don't worry, fellows. I'm sorry to trouble you, but a certain lady who has your interests at heart hasgiven me. all unwittingly, a new line of approach. Look, fellows. I'm trying to be friendly, see. I do wantto reach across, if it can be done."

Removing his trousers, squatting close to them, speaking gently, the director of the Exozoo defecatedon to the plastic floor.

CHAPTER EIGHT



"How far-seeing you were to christen this world Grud-grodd. Cosmopolitan,1' the third Politan said.

"I've explained several times my reason for thinking that we cannot any longer be on Grudgrodd," saidtheSacred Cosmopolitan, as the two utods lay comfortably together.

"And I still say that I don't believe metal could be made strong enough to withstand launching into thestar-realms. Don't forget I took a course in metal-fracture when I was a priestling. Besides, the metalthing wasn't the right shape for a spaceship. I know it doesn't do to be too dogmatic, but there are somepoints on which one has to make a stand: though I do it with regards to your cosmopolity only withapologies."

"Say what you may, I have the feeling in my bones that the Triple suns no longer shine on these skies -not that these thin lifeforms ever permit us to see the skies."

As he spoke, the Sacred Cosmopolitan swivelled one of his heads to watch the thin lifeformperforming his natural function a few feet distant. He thought he recognized this thin lifeform as one ofthose whose habits did not arouse disgust; certainly he was not the one who came with anattachment thatspurted a jet of cold water. Nor did he seem to be one of those who sat about with machines and twoassistants (no doubt they were this world's equivalents of the priesthood) so palpably trying to seducehim and the third Politan into communication.

The thin lineform stood up and assembled the cloth over the lower part of his body.

"That is very interesting!" the Politan exclaimed. "It confirms what we were saying a couple of daysago."

"In most particulars, yes. As we thought, they have two heads as we do, but one is for dunging andone for speaking."

"What seems so laughable is that they have a pair of legs sticking out of their lower heads. Yes,perhaps after all you are right, father-mother; despite all logic, perhaps we really are spirited far awayfrom the Triple Suns, for it is difficult to imagine any of this sort of horrid absurdity on the planets under



their sway. Why do you think hecame to perform a dung ritual here?"

The Cosmopolitan twiddled one of his fingers in a motion of bafflement.

"He can hardly regard this as a sacred seeding spot. It may be that he performed merely to let us seethat we were not the only ones possessing fertility; or on the other hand, it may have been merely fromcuriosity, in order to see what we did. Here's a case again. I think, where for the time being we mustadmit that the thinlegs' ways of thought are too alien for us to interpret, and that any tentative explanationwe may offer is bound to be utodo-morphic. And while we're on the subject. ... I don't want to alarmyou in any way ... no, as Cosmopolitan, I must keep these things to myself."

"Please - since there have been only the two of us, you have told me many things from the rich store ofyour mind that you would not otherwise have told me. Snort on, I beg you."

The alien lifeform was standing near by, watching. He was unable to maintain stillness for any length oftime. Ignoring him, the Cosmopolitan began to speak cautiously, for he knew on what dangerous groundhe trod. When one of his grorgs began to crawl under his belly, he slapped it back into position with afirmness that surprised even himself.

"I don't want you to be alarmed at what I am about to say, son, though I am aware that I may seem atfirst to strike at the very foundations of our belief. You remember that moment when the thinlegs came tous in the dark, when we were in the midden by the side of the star-realm-ark?"

"Though it seems a long while ago, I do not forget it."

"The thinlegs came to us then and immediately translated the others Into their carrion stage."

"I remember. I was startled at first. I crept close to you."

"And then?"



"When they were taking us in their wheeled truck, to "the tall metal thing you say may have been astar-realm-ark, I was so overcome with shame that I had not been chosen to move further along theutodammp cycle, that I hardly took in any other impressions."

The thinlegs was making signals with the mouth of his upper head, but they moved on to a higheraudibility band, as was appropriate when discussing personal aspects, and ignored him from then on.

The Sacred Cosmopolitan continued. "My son, I find this difficult to say, since our language naturallydoes not hold the appropriate concepts, but these lifeforms may be as alien in thought as they are inshape: not just in their upper thoughts, but in their whole psychological constitution. For a long while Ifelt as you did, a sort of shame that our six companions had been chosen for translation while we hadn'tBut... supposing, Blug Lugug, that these lifeforms did not exercise choice, suppose they translated us atrandom."

"Random? I'm surprised to hear you use such a vulgar word, Cosmopolitan. The fall of a leaf or thesplash of a raindrop may be - er, random, but with higher lifeforms -everything higher than a mud snwitch- the fact that they form part of life cycles prevents anything random."

"That applies to beings on the worlds of the Triple Suns. But these creatures of Grudgrodd, thesethinlegs, may be part of another and conflicting pattern." At this point, the lifeform left them. As hedisappeared,the light faded from their room. Quite uninterested inthese minor phenomena, theCosmopolitan continued togrope for words. "What I am saving is that in some ways these creaturesmaynot have helpful intentions for us. There is a wordfrom the Revolution Age that is useful here; thesethinlegsmay bebad. Do you know this word from your studies?"

"It's a sort of sickness, isn't it?" the Politan asked, recalling the years when he had wallowed throughthe mazes of mindsuckle in the epoch of Welcome White.

"Well, a special sort of sickness. I feel that these thin-legs are bad in a more healthy way."

"Is that why you have not wished us to communicate with them?"

"Certainly not. I am no more prepared to converse with strangers bereft of my wallow than they wouldprobably be prepared to converse with me bereft of the body materials that cover them. In the end, whenthey grasp that rudimentary fact, we may perhaps try to talk to them, though I suspect their brains may be



quite as limited as their voice range suggests. But we shall certainly get nowhere until they realize wehave certain basic requirements; once they have grasped that, talk may be worth while."

"This ... this business ofbad. I'm alarmed you should think like this."

"Son, the more I consider what has happened, the more I am forced to do so."

Blug Lugug. who had been known for a hundred and eighty years as a third Politan, lapsed into atroubled silence.

He was recalling more and more aboutbad. In the Revolution Age, there had been bad. Even thoughthe utods lived up to eleven hundred years, the Revolution Age was over three thousand generations ago;yet its effects still lingered in everyday life on Dapdrof.

At the beginning of that amazing age was born Manna Warun. It was significant that he had beenhatched during a particularly cataclysmic entropic solar orbital disestablishment, the very esod, in fact,during which Dapdrof, changing from Saffron Smiler to Yellow Scowler, had lost its little moon,Woback, which now pursued its own eccentric course alone.

Manna Warun had collected disciples and left the traditional wallows and salads of his people. Hisband had moved to the wastes, there to spend many years refining and developing the ancient andtraditional skills of the utods. Some of his group left him; more joined. There they stayed for one hundredand seventy-five years, according to the old priestly histories.

During that time, they created what Manna Warun called "an industrial revolution". They learnt tomake many more metals than their contemporaries knew of: hard metals, metals that could stretch thinand convey new forms of power along their lengths. The revolutionaries scorned to walk on their ownsix feet any more. Now they rode in various sorts of car that boasted a multitude of tumbling feet, orthey flew in the air in other cars with wings. So said the old legends, though there was no doubt that theyliked to lay it on a bit thick.

But when the revolutionaries came back to their people to try and convert them to new doctrines, onefeature of their lives in particular seemed strange. For the revolutionaries preached - and dramaticallypractised - what they called "cleanliness".



The mass of the people (if the old reports were to be believed) were well disposed towards most ofthe proposed innovations. They were particularly pleased with the notion that terms of motherhood mightbe eased by introducing one or more systems that would abolish mind-suckle; because for most of thefifty years of a utod's childhood a mother was committed to mindsuckling her child on the complicatedlaw and lore that was racial history and habit; and the revolutionaries taught that this function might behandled by mechanism. But "cleanliness" was something different altogether - a real revolution.

Cleanliness was a difficult thing to grasp, if only because it attacked the very roots of being. Itsuggested that thewarm mud banks in which the utod had evolved might now be abandoned, that thewallows and middensteads and middens which were effective mud-substitutes be abandoned, that thelittle parasite-devouring grorgs which were the traditional utodian companions be also abandoned.

Manna and his disciples demonstrated that it was possible to live without all this needless luxury("dirt" was another term they used for it). The cleanliness was evidence of progress. That in the modernrevolutionary age, mud was bad.

In this way, the revolutionaries had turned necessity into virtue. Working in the wastes, far away fromthe wallows and their sheltering ammps, mud and liquid had been scarce. In that austerity had been borntheir austere creed.

They went further. Once he had started. Manna Warun developed his theme, and attacked theestablished beliefs of the utods. In this he was aided by his chief disciple, Creezeazs. Creezeazs deniedthat the spirits of utods were born into their infant bodies from the ammps; he denied that a carrion stagefollowed the corporeal stage. Or rather, he could not gainsay that the bodily elements of the corporealstage were absorbed into the mud and so drawn up again into the ammps, but he claimed that there wasno similar transference for a spirit. He had no proof of this. It was just an emotional statement obviouslyaimed at getting the utod away from their natural habit; yet he found those who believed him.

Strange moral laws, prohibitions, inhibitions, began to grow up among the believers. But it could notbe denied that they had power. The cities of the wastes to which they withdrew blazed with light in thedark. They cultivated the lands by strange methods, and drew strange fruit from them. They took tocovering their casspu orifices. They changed from male to female at unprecedented rates, indulgingthemselves without breeding. All this and more they did. Yet it was not noticeable that they were exactlyhappier - not that they preached happiness, for their talk was more of duty and rights and of what wasconsidered good or bad.

One great thing that the revolutionaries achieved in their cities stirred everyone's imagination.



The utods had many poetic qualities, as their vast fund of tales, epics, songs, chants, and werewhispersshow. This side of them was touched when the revolutionaries built some of their machinery into anancient ammp seed and drove it into and far beyond the skies. Manna Warun went in it

Since pre-memory days, before mindsuckle had made the races of utod what they were, the ammpseeds had been used for boats with which to sail to less crowded parts of Dapdrof. To sail to lesscrowded worlds had a sort of crazy appropriateness in it. Down in the wallows, the complicated nexi ofold families began to feel that perhaps after all cleanliness had something. The fifteen worlds that circledabout the six planets of the Home Cluster were all visible at various times to the naked eye, and hencewere known and admired. To experience the thrill of visiting them might even be worth renouncing "dirt".

People, converts and perverts, began to trickle into the cities of the wastes.

Then something odd happened.

The word began to get about that Manna Warun was not all he had made himself out to be. It wassaid that he had often slid away to indulge himself in a secret wallow, for instance. Rumours spread thickand fast, and of course Manna was not there to deny them.

As the ugly rumours grew, people wondered when Creezeazs would step forward and clear hisleader's name.

At last, Creezeazs did step forward. Heavily, with tears in his eyes, speaking through his ockpuorifices only, headmitted that the stories circulating were true. Manna was a sinner, a tyrant, amud-bather. He had none of the virtues he demanded from others. In fact, though others - his friend andtrue disciple Creezeazs in particular - had done all in their power to stop him. Manna had gone to thebad. Now that the sad tale had emerged, there was nothing for it. Manna Warun must go. Itwas in the public interest. Nobody, of course, would be happy about it; but there was such athing as duty. People had a right to be protected, otherwise the good would be destroyed withthe bad.

Hardly a utod liked all this, although they saw Creezeazs' point of view; Manna must be expelled.When the prophet returned from the stars, there was a reception committee waiting for him on thestar-realm-ark field.



Before the ark landed, trouble broke out A young utod, whose shining but alarmingly cracked skinshowed him to be a thorough-going Hygienic (as the Corps of the Revolution were currently callingthemselves), jumped up on to a box. He deretracted all his limbs and cried in a voice like a steam whistlethat Creezeazs had been lying about Manna to serve his own ends. All who followed Creezeazs weretraitors.

At this moment, an unprecedented event occurred, occurred even as the star-realm-ark floated downfrom the sides: fighting broke out, and a utod with a sharp metal rod hastened Creezeazs on to the nextstage of his utod-ammp cycle.

"Creezeazs!" gasped the third Politan.

"What make you mention that unfortunate name?" inquired the Cosmopolitan.

"I was thinking about the Revolution Age. Creezeazs is the first utod in our history to be propelledalong the utod-ammp cycle without goodwill," Blug Lugug said, coming back to the present.

"That was a bad time. But perhaps because these thin-legs also seem to enjoy cleanliness, they alsohasten people round the cycle without goodwill. As I say, they are bad in a healthy way. And we aretheir random victims."

Blug Lugug withdrew his limbs as much as possible. He shut his eyes, closed his orifices, and stretchedhimself until his external appearance was that of an enormous terrestrial sausage. This was his way ofexpressing priestly alarm.

There was nothing in their situation to warrant the cosmopolitan's extreme language. True, it mightbecome rather dull if they were kept here for any length of time -one needed a change of scenery everyfive years or so. And it was thoughtless the way the lifeforms removed the signs of their fertility. But thelifeforms showed evidence of goodwill: they supplied food, and soon learned not to bring items that wereunwelcome. With time and patience, they might learn other useful things.

On the other hand, there was this question ofbad. It was indeed possible that the lifeforms had the



same sort of madness that existed in the Revolution Age of Dapdrof. Yet it was absurd to pretend that,however alien they might be, these thinlegs did not have an equivalent evolutionary cycle to theutodammp cycle; and this, being so fundamental, could only be something for which they would have aprofound respect - in their own peculiar way, naturally.

And there was this: the Revolution Age was a freak, a mere flash in the pan, lasting only for fivehundred years -half a lifespan - out of the hundreds of millions of years of utodammp memory. It wouldseem rather a tall coincidence if the thinlegs happened to be undergoing the same trouble at this moment.

It was notorious that people who used violent words likebad andrandom victim, the very words ofmadness, were themselves verging on madness. So the Sacred Cosmopolitan. ...

At the very thought, the Politan quivered. His fondness for the Cosmopolitan was deepened by thefact that the older utod, during one of his female phases, had mothered him. Now he stood in need ofconsolation by the other members of his wallow; clearly, it was time they were getting back to Dapdrof.

That implied that they should speak with these aliens and hasten their return. The Cosmopolitan forbadcommunication - and quite rightly - on a point of etiquette; but it began to look more and more as ifsomething should be done. Perhaps, Blug Lugug thought, he could get one of the aliens on his own andtry to convey some sense to it. It shouldn't be difficult; he had memorized every sentence they hadspoken in his presence since their arrival in the metal thing; although it made no sense to him, it should beuseful somehow.

Pursing one of his ockpu orifices, he said, "Wilfred, you don't happen to have a screwdriver in yourpocket, do you?"

"What's that?" asked the Cosmopolitan.

"Nothing. Thinlegs-talk."

Sinking into a silence that held less cheer than usual, the third Politan began to think about theRevolution Age, in case it had any useful parallels with the present case to offer.



With the death of Creezeazs and the return home of Manna Warun, more trouble had begun. This waswhenbad had flourished at its grandest. Quite a number of utods were thrust without goodwill into thenext phase of their cycle. Manna, of course, returned from his flight in the star-realm-ark very vexed tofind how things had turned against him in the Cities of the Wastes.

He became more extreme than before. His people were to forswear mud-bathing entirely; instead,water would be supplied to every dwelling. They were to keep their casspu orifices covered. Skin oilswere forbidden. Greater industrywas required. And so on.

But the seeds of dissatisfaction had been well sown by Creezeazs and his followers, and moreblood-shedding ensued. Many people returned to their ancestral wallows, leaving the Cities of theWastes slowly to fall into ruin while the inhabitants fought each other. Everyone regretted this, since thereexisted a genuine admiration for Manna which nothing could quench.

In particular, his journey among the stars was widely discussed and praised. Much was known, evenat that period, about the neighbouring celestial bodies known as the Home Cluster, and particularly aboutthe three suns, Welcome White, Saffron Smiler, and Yellow Scowler, around each of which Dapdrofrevolved in turn as one esod followed another. These suns, and the other planets in the cluster, were asfamiliar - and as strange - to the people as the Circumpolar Mountains in Dapdrof's NorthernShunkshukkun.

Whatever woes the Revolution Age had brought, it had brought the chance to investigate these otherplaces. It was a chance the ordinary utod found he wanted.

The Hygienics had control of all star-realm travel. The masses of the unconverted, pilgrimaging from allover the globe to the Cities of the Wastes, found they could partake in the new exploration of otherworlds under one of two conditions. They could become converts to the harsh disciplines of MannaWarun, or they could mine the materials needed for building and fuelling the engines of the arks. Most ofthem preferred to do the latter.

Mining came easily; had not the utod evolved from little burrowing creatures not unlike the HaprafrufMud Mole? They dug the ores willingly, and soon the whole process of building star arks becameroutine, almost as much a folk art as weaving, platting, or Wishing. So in turn travel through the starrealms took on something of the same informality, particularly when it was discovered that theTriple Sunsand their three near neighbours supported seven other worlds on which life could be lived almost asenjoyably as on Dapdrof.



Then came a time when life indeed was rather pleasant on some of the other worlds: on Buskey, forinstance, and Clabshub, where the utodammp system was quickly established. Meanwhile the Hygienicssplit into rival sects, those that practised retraction of all limbs, and those that deplored it as immoral.Finally, the three nuclear Wars of Wise Deportment broke out, and the fair face of the home planetunderwent a thoroughly unhygienic bombardment, the severity of which - destroying as it did so manymiles of carefully tended forest and swamp land - actually changed climatic conditions for a period ofabout a century.

The resulting upheavals in the weather, followed by a chain of severe winters, concluded the wars inthe most radical of ways, by converting into the carrion stage almost all the surviving Hygienics ofwhatever persuasion. Manna himself disappeared; his end was never known for sure, although legendhad it that a particularly fine ammp, growing in the midst of the ruins of the largest of the Cities of theWastes, represented the next stage of his existence.

Slowly, the old and more reasonable ways returned.

Helped by utods returning from the other planets, the home population re-established itself. Damswere rebuilt, swamps painstakingly restored, middensteads reintroduced on the traditional patterns,ammps re-planted everywhere. The Cities of the Wastes were left to fall into decay. Nobody wasinterested any more in the ethics of cleanliness. Law and ordure were restored.

Yet at whatever expense it had been acquired, the industrial revolution had borne its fruits, and not allof them were permitted to die. The basic techniques necessary for maintaining star-realm travel passedto theancient priesthood dedicated to maintaining the happiness of the people. The priesthood simplifiedpractices already smoothed into quasi-ritual by habit and saw that these techniques were handed on frommother to son by mind-suckle, together with the rest of the racial lore.

All that now lay three thousand generations and almost as many esods ago. Through the disciplines ofmindsuckle, its outlines remained clear. In Blug Lugug's brains, the memory of the hideous perverted talkand teachings of Manna and other Hygienics was vivid. He prided himself on being the filthiest andhealthiest of his generation of priests. And he knew by the absurd phrases of moral condemnation theCosmopolitan had uttered that the cleanliness inflicted on his old body by the thinlegs was affecting hisbrains. It was time something was done.

CHAPTER NINE



It was an American sage back in the nineteenth century who coined the slogan since used sosuccessfully on the wrappers of every Happy Hypersleep tablet, "The mass of men live lives of quietdesperation." Thoreau certainly had a point when he observed that anxiety and even misery feed in thebreast of those often most concerned with putting up a brave show of happiness; yet such is theconstitution of human nature that the reverse holds equally true, and under conditions commonlyregarded as mostlikely to create misery, a man may lead a life of quiet happiness.

The gates of St. Alban's prison swung open and emitted the prison bus. It bowled out beneath thealuminium legend over the portal that read "To Understand Is To Forgive", and headed for the region ofthe metropolis called The Gay Ghetto.

Or so the area was most generally known. Its inhabitants called it The Knackers, or Joburg, orWonderland, or Sucker City, or indeed any less savoury name that occurred to them. The area had beenestablished by a government enlightened enough to realize that some men, while being far from criminal inintent, are incapable of living within the exacting framework of civilization; which is to say that they do notshare the goals and incentives of the majority of their fellow beings; which is to say that they see no pointin working from ten till four day in and day out for the privilege of maintaining a woman in wedlock andxorn number of children. This body of men, which numbered geniuses and neurotics in equal proportions(frequently within the same anatomy), was allowed to settle within the Gay Ghetto, which - because itwas unsupervised in any way by the forces of law - soon became the nesting ground also of criminals.Within the ruinous square mile of this human game reserve, a unique society formed; it looked at themonstrous machinery of living that ground on beyond its walls with the same mixture of fear and moraldisapproval with which the monstrous machinery regarded it.

The prison taxi halted at the end of a steep brick street. The two released prisoners, RodneyWalthamstone and his ex-cell mate, climbed out. At once the taxi swerved and drove away, its doorautomatically sliding shut as it went.

Walthamstone looked about him with unease.

The drearily respectable dolls' houses on either side ofthe street hunched their thin shoulders behinddog-soiled railings, averting their gaze from the strip of waste that began where they left off.

Beyond the waste rose the wall of the Gay Ghetto. Some of the wall was wall; some of it was formedfrom little old houses into which concrete had been poured until the little old houses were solid.



"Is this it?" Walthamstone asked.

"This is it, Wal. This is freedom. We can live here without anybody mucking us about."

The early sunshine, a snaggle-toothed old trickster, lay its transient gold and broken shadows acrossthe uninviting flank of the Ghetto, of Joburg, of Paradise, of Bums' Berg, of Queer Street, of Floppers.Tid started towards it, saw that Walthamstone hesitated, grasped his hand, and pulled him along.

"I ought to write to my old Aunt Flo and Hank Quilter and tell 'em what I'm doing," Walthamstonesaid. He stood between the old life and the new, naturally fearful. Although Tid was his own age, Tid wasso much more sure of himself.

"You can think about that later," Tid said.

"There was other blokes on the starship...."

"Like I tell you, Wai, only suckers allow themselves to enlist on spaceships. I got a cousin Jack, hesigned on for Charon; he's perched out on that miserable billiard ball, fighting Brazilians. Comeon, Wai."

The grubby hand tightened on the grubby wrist.

"Perhaps I'm being stupid. Perhaps I got all mixed up in jug," Walthamstone said.

"That's what jug is meant for."

"My poor old aunt. She's always been so kind to me."



"Don't make me weep. You know I'll be kind to you too."

Giving up the gruelling battle to express himself, Walthamstone moved forward and was led like a lostsoultowards the entrance to Avernus. But the ascent to this Avernus was not easy. No portals stoodwide. They climbed over rubble and litter towards the solid houses.

One of the houses had a door which creaked open when Tid pulled it. A tongue of sunlight licked inwith their untrusting glances. Within, the solid concrete had been chipped into a sort of chimney withsteps in the side. Without another word to his friend, Tid began to climb; left with no option,Walthamstone followed. In the gloom on either side of him he saw tiny grottoes, some no bigger thanopen mouths; and there were cysts and bubbles; and clots and blemishes; all of which had formed in theliquid concrete when it had first been poured down through the rafters and engulfed the house.

The chimney brought them out to an upper window at the back. Tid gave a cheer and turned to helpWalthamstone.

They squatted on the window-sill. The ground sloped down from the sill, where it had been piled as anembankment for no other apparent purpose than to grow as fine a crop of cow parsley, tall grass, andelder as you could wish to see.

This wilderness was divided by paths, some of which ran round the upper windows of the solidhouses, some of which sloped down into the Ghetto. Already people stirred there, a child of seven rannaked, whooping from doorstep to doorstep with a newspaper hat on its head. Ancient facades grewdown into the earth, tatty and grand with a patina of old dirt and new sun.

"Me dear old shanty town!" Tid cried. He ran down one of the tracks, a foam of flower about hisknees.

Hesitating only a moment, Walthamstone ran down after his lover.

Bruce Ainson assumed his coat with a fine air of desperation, while Enid stood at the other end of thehall, watching him with her hands clasped. He wanted her tostart to speak, so that he could say, "Don'tsay anything!", but she had nothing else to say. He looked sideways at her, and a shaft of compassionpierced through his self-concern.



"Don't worry," he said.

She smiled, made a gesture. He closed the door and was gone.

Outside, he paid ten tubbies into the corner sinker and rose to the local traffic level. Abstractedly, heclimbed into a moving chair that skied him up to the non-stop level and racked itself on to one of therobot monobuses. As he sped towards distant London, Bruce dwelt on the scene he had just made withEnid after the news in the paper hit him.

Yes, he had behaved badly. He had behaved badly because he did not, in such a crisis, see the pointof behaving well. One was as moral as one could be, as well-intentioned, as well-controlled, asintelligent, asinnocent; and then the flood of days brought down with it (from some ghastly unseenheadwaters, whence it had been travelling for unguessed time) some vile foetid thing that had to be facedand survived. Why should one behave other than badly before such beastliness?

Now the mood, the shaky exhilaration of the mood, was passing. He had shed it on Enid. He wouldhave to behave well before Mihaly.

But did life have to be quite so vile a draught? Dimly, he recognized one of the drives that had carriedhim through the years of study necessary to gain him his Master Explorer's certificate. He had hoped tofind a world, hiding beyond reach of sight of Earth in the dark light years, a world of beings for whomdiurnal existence was not such an encumbrance to the spirit. He wanted to know how it was done.

Now it looked as if he'd never have the chance again.

Reaching the tremendous new Outflank Ring that circled high about outer London, Ainson changed onto a district level and headed for the quarter where Sir Mihaly Pasztor worked. Ten minutes later, he wasstalling impatiently before the Director's secretary.

"I doubt if he can see you this morning, Mr. Ainson, since you have no appointment."



"He has to see me, my dear girl; will you please announce me?"

Pecking doubtfully at the nail of her little finger, the girl disappeared into the inner office. She emergeda minute later, standing aside without speaking to admit Ainson into Mihaly's room. Ainson swept by herwith irritation; that was a girl he had always been careful to smile and nod at; her answering show offriendliness had been nothing but pretence.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you when it's obvious you are very busy," he said to the Director. Mihaly did notimmediately assure his old friend that it was perfectly all right. He maintained a steady pacing by thewindow and asked. "What brings you here, Bruce? How's Enid?"

Ignoring the irrelevance of this last question, Ainson said, "I should think you might guess what hasbrought me here."

"It would be better if you told me."

Pulling a newspaper from his pocket, Ainson dropped it on Pasztor's desk.

"You must have seen the paper. This confounded American ship, theGansas, or whatever it's called,leaves next week to look for the home planet of our ETA's."

"I hope they will have luck."

"Don't you realize the absolute disgrace of it? I have not been invited to join the expedition. Every dayI expected a word from them. It hasn't come. Surely there must be a mistake?"

"I think it is impossible there should be a mistake in such a matter, Bruce."

"I see. Then it's a public disgrace." Ainson stood there looking at his friend. Or was he really a friend?Was it not a gross misuse of the term, just because they had been acquainted for a number of years? Hehad admired the many sides of Pasztor's character, had admired him for the success of his technidramas,



had admired his leadership on the First Charon Expedition, had admired him for being a man of action.Now he saw more deeply; he saw that this was merely a playboy of action, a dramatist's idea of a man ofaction, an imitation that revealed its spurious-ness at last by the calmness with which, from his safe seat atthe Exozoo, he watched Ms friend's discomfiture.

"Mihaly, although I am a year older than you, I am not yet ready to accept a safe seat back on Earth;I'm a man of action, and I'm still capable of action. I think I can say without false modesty that they stillhave need of men like me at the frontiers of the known universe. I was the man who discovered theETA's, and I haven't forgotten that, if others have. I should be on theGansas when she goes into TPnext week. You could still pull strings and get me on to her, if you wanted. I ask you - I beg you to dothis for me, and swear I will never ask you another favour. I just cannot bear the disgrace of beingpassed over in a vital moment like this."

Mihaly pulled a wry face, cupped an elbow and rubbed his chin.

"Would you care for a drink, Bruce?"

"Certainly not. Why do you always insist on offering me one when you know I don't drink?"

"You must excuse me if I have a little one. It is not normally my habit at this early time of morning." Ashe went over to a pair of small doors set in the wall, he said, "Perhaps you will feel better, or perhapsworse, if I tell you that you are not alone in your disgrace. Here at the Exozoo we have ourdisappointments. We have not made the progress in communication with these poor ETA'sthat we hadhoped to do."

"I thought that one of them had suddenly started spouting English?"

"Spouting is right. A series of jumbled phrases with amazingly accurate imitations of the various voicesthat originally spoke them. I recognized my own voice quite clearly. Of course we have it all on tape. But,unfortunately, this development did not come soon enough to save the axe from falling. I have receivedword from the Minister for Extra-Terrestrial Affairs that all research with the ETA's is to close downforthwith."

Unwilling though he was to be diverted from his own concerns, Ainson was startled.



"By the Buzzardian universe! Theycan't just close it down! This - we've got here the most importantthing that has ever happened in the history of man. They - I don't understand. They can't close it down."

Pasztor poured himself a small whisky and sipped it.

"Unfortunately, the Minister's attitude is understandable enough. I'm as shocked at this developmentas you are, Bruce, but I see how it comes about. It is not easy to make the general public or even aminister see that the business of understanding another race - or even deciding how its intelligence is to bemeasured beside ours - is not something that can be done in a couple of months. Let me put it bluntly,Bruce; you are thought to have been lax, and the suspicion has spread - just a feeling in the winds, nomore - that we are similarly at fault. That feeling has made the minister's job a little more easy, that is all."

"But he cannot stop the work Bodley Temple and the others are doing."

"I went to see him last evening. He has stopped it. This afternoon the ETA's are being handed over tothe Exobiology Department."

"Exobiology! Why, Mihaly, why? There is a conspiracy!"

"With an optimism I personally regard as unfounded, the Minister reasons like this. Within a couple ofmonths, theGansas will have located more ETA's - a whole planet full of them, in fact. Many of the basicquestions, such as how far advanced the creatures are, will then be answered, and on the basis of thoseanswers a new and much more effective attempt to communicate with them can be launched."

A sort of shaking took Ainson's body. This confirmed all he had ever suspected about the powersranged against him. Blindly, he took a lighted mescahale from Pasztor and sucked its fragrance into hislungs. Slowly his vision cleared; he said, "Supposing all this were so; something more must lie behind theminister's move."

The Director helped himself to another drink.



"I inferred as much myself last evening. The minister gave me a reason which, like it or not, we mustaccept."

"What was the reason?"

"The war. We are comfortable here, we are apt to forget this crippling war with Brazil that hasdragged on for so long. Brazil have captured Square 503, and it looks asif our casualties have beenhigher than announced. What interests the government at present more than the possibility of talking withthe ETA's is the possibility that they do not experience pain. If there is some substance circulating in theirarteries that confers complete analgesia, then the government want to know about it. It is obviously apotential war weapon.

"So, the official reasoning goes, we must find out how these beings tick. We must make the best use ofthem."

Ainson rubbed bis head. The war! More insanity! It had never entered his mind.

"I knew it would happen! I knew it would! So they are going to cut our two ETA's up," he said. Hisvoice sounded like a creaking door.

"They are going to cut them up in the most refined way.

They are going to sink electrodes into their brains, to see if pain can be induced. They will try a littleover-heating here, a little freezing there. In short, they will try to discover if the ETA's freedom from painreally exists: and if it exists, whether it is engendered by a natural in-sensitivity or brought about by ananti-body. I have protested against the whole business, but I might as well have kept quiet. I'm as upsetas you are."

Ainson clenched a fist and shook it vigorously close to his stomach.

"Lattimore is behind all this. I knew he was my enemy directly I saw him! You should never have let -"



"Oh don't be foolish, Bruce! Lattimore has nothing whatever to do with it. Can't you see this is the sortof bloody stupid thing that happens whenever something important is involved. It's the people who havethe power rather than the people who have the knowledge who get the ultimate say. Sometimes I reallythink mankind is a bit mad."

"They're all mad. Fancy not begging me to go on theGansas! I discovered these creatures, I knowthem! TheGansas needs me! You must do what you can, Mihaly, for the sake of an old friend."

Grimly, Pasztor shook his head.

"I can do nothing for you, I have explained why I myself am temporarily not very much in favour. Youmust do what you can for yourself, as we all must. Besides, there is a war on."

"Now you are using that same excuse! People have all been against me, always. My father was. So'smy wife, my son - now you. I thought better of you, Mihaly. It's a public disgrace if I'm not on theGansas when she hits vacuum, and I don't know what I'll do."

Mihaly shifted uncomfortably, hugged his whisky glass and stared at the floor.

"You didn't really expect better of me, Bruce. At heart,you know you never expect better ofanybody."

"I certainly shan't in future. You don't wonder a mangrows bitter. My God, what really is there to livefor!" He stood up, stubbing the end of his mescahale into adisposer. "I can see myself out," he said. In astate approaching elevation, he left the room,forging past the covertly interested secretary. Of course hedidn't feel as badly as he led Mihaly, that trumped up little Hungarian, to believe; it would do the fellowgood to see that some people had real sufferings, and weren't just poseurs.

He fell back on an earlier track of thought. You didn'tgo through the business of searching for newplanets -with all the sweat and sacrifice that that entailed - merely because you hoped some day to find arace of beings to whom life was not just a burden for anyone with any sort of sensitivity. No, there wasanother side to that coin! You went because life on Earth was such hell, because, to be quite precise,living with other human beings was such a messy job.



Not that it was so wonderful on board ship - that bastard Bargerone, he was to blame for all thistrouble -but at least on a ship everyone had his position, his station, and there were rules to keep him toit, and punish him if he did not keep to it. Perhaps that was the secret of the exploring spirit. Yes, perhapsthat had always been the knowledge in the hearts of the other great explorers! Taxing though theunknown realms were, they held no dangers like those that lurked in the breast of friends and family.Better the devils you don't know, than those that know you!

He headed for home in fine angry contentment. Hadn't he always thought that things would turn outlike this!

When the Master Explorer had left his office, Sir Mihaly Pasztor drained his glass, set it down, andwalked heavilyover to the door of his small adjourning room. He opened it. A young man sat in the largecupped hand of a chair, smoking a mescahale as if he would eat it. He was of willowy build, with a neatbeard that made him look older than his eighteen years. His usually intelligent face, as he turned it now ina mute question towards Mihaly, was merely heavy and glum.

"Your father has gone, Aylmer." Mihaly said. "I recognized his voice. He sounded all overwrought asusual." They moved back into the office.

Aylmer slipped his mescahale into the disposer on thedesk and asked. "What was he after? Anythingto do with me?"

"Not really. He wanted me to get him aboard theGansas."

Their eyes met. The young sullen face began to smile. Together, they burst into laughter.

"Like son, like father! You didn't tell him, I hope, that I had come with an exactly similar request?"

"Of course not. He had enough to be unhappy about for one day." As he spoke, Mihaly rummaged inhis desk. "Now don't be offended if I push you off fast, young man, but I have a lot of work to do. Youare sure that you still want to join the Exploration Corps?"



"You know I do. Uncle Mihaly. I feel I cannot stay on Earth any more. My parents have made thatimpossible for me, at least for the present. I want to get out into space, away."

Mihaly nodded sympathetically. He'd heard the same sentiments so often, and never discouragedthem, if only because he once thought that way himself. When you were young you never realized thatthere was no "away", only - even in the most distant galaxy - endless locations haunted by the self. Helaid out some documents on the top of the desk.

"These are the various papers you will need. A friend of mine, Bryant Lattimore of the USGN FlightAdvice, has explained things to David Pestalozzi, who will captain theGansas on this run. Because yourfather is well known, it has been thought wiser to have you ship under an assumed name. Accordingly,you will be known as Samuel Melmoth. I hope you won't mind that?"

"Why should I mind? I'm very grateful for all you have done, and I have no particular fondness for myown name."

He clenched his fists above his head and beamed with triumph.

How easy it was to be excited when you were young, Mihaly thought. How hard for real friendship tospring up between two different generations - one could communicate, but it was often like two differentspecies signalling to each other across a gulf.

"What happened to that girl you were mixed up with?" he asked.

"Oh, her!" The sour look returned for a moment. "She was a dead loss."

"I hope you'll forgive my curiosity, Aylmer, but was she not the cause of your being turned out of yourfather's house? What did the two of you do that your father regarded as so unforgiveable?"

Aylmer looked restless.



"Come, you can tell me, surely." Mihaly said, with impatience. "I am a broadminded man, a man of theworld, nothing like your father."

Aylmer smiled. "That's funny, I always thought that in many ways you and father were rather alike. Forinstance, you have this background of space travel; and then neither of you likes the hygienic syntheticfoods and you still eat old-fashioned foods, such as - well, bits of animal cooked." He made a gesture ofdisgust and said, "But if it satisfies your curiosity, you may as well know that father came inunexpectedlyone night on his last leave when I had my girl on my bed. I was kissing her between the thighs when heopened the door. The sight nearly drove him off his nut! Does it shock you too?"

Looking down at his desk, Mihaly shook his head and said, "My dear Aylmer. what shocks me is thatI should appear to you like your father. This business of food -can't you see how generation bygeneration we are getting farther and farther divorced from nature? This craving for synthetic food is onemore instance of man's denial of his animal nature. We are a mixture of animal and spirit, and to deny oneside of our nature is to impoverish the other."

"The Stone Age men used the same argument, I daresay, to whoever started cooking their food. Butwe live in the Buzzardian universe now, and must think accordingly. You must see, Uncle, that we'vecome too far for us to be able to argue any longer about what is 'natural' and what isn't."

"Oh? Why then are you disgusted about my eating 'bits of animal'?"

"Because that is inherently ... well, it's just disgusting."

"You'd better go, Aylmer, I have the business of handing over my two aliens to the vivisectors. I wishyou well."

"Cheer up, Uncle, we'll be bringing you lots more to experiment on!" And with that thoughtless wordof encouragement, Aylmer Ainson was stuffing the documents into his pocket, waving, leaving.



CHAPTER TEN

Viewed from space on an accelerated time scale, Earth and its peoples might have been taken for oneorganism. Occasionally the organism would have a convulsion. Moving like microbes down arteries, thehuman specks would slide down their traffic lanes and converge on various points on the globe until thosepoints began to look like sores on the cuticle of the sphere.

The inflammation would grow, would seem to be a mere diseased confusion, until a change tookplace. The specks would draw back from a central object, producing a semblance of orderliness. Thiscentral object would stand out like a pustule, a stormhead of infection. Then it would burst, or appear toburst, and fly outwards. As if some intolerable pressure had thus been relieved, the people thatresembled specks to the cosmic observer would now disperse, possibly to reassemble later at anotherseat of infection. Meanwhile, the ejected blob of matter hurtled outwards - making the cosmic eyeduck out of the way and attend to its own business.

This particular blob of ejected matter bore the name 5.5.Gansas engraved.in glucinated berylliumletters three yards tall on her bows. Once clear of the platter of the solar system, however, the namebecame scarcely legible even to the most hypothetical observer, for the ship entered TP flight.

Transponential is one of those ideas that have hung on the fringes of man's mind since he first foundtongue to express himself, and probably before; almost certainly before, since it is the least puissant whodream most fervently of omnipotence. For, expressed semantically, trans-ponential flight reveals itself asthe very opposite of travel; it causes the ship to stand still and the universe to move in the desireddirection.

Or perhaps it was explained more accurately by Dr. Chosissy in his World Congress Lecture of 2033,when he said, "However surprising it may seem to those of us brought up in the cosy certainty ofEinsteinian physics, the variable factor in the new Buzzardian equations proves to be the universe.Distance may be said to be annihilated. We recognize at last that distance is only a mathematical concepthaving no real existence in the Buzzardian universe. During TP flight, it is no longer possible to say thatthe universe surrounds the starship. More accurately, we should say that the starship surrounds theuniverse." The ancient dreams of power had been realized, and the mountain came obediently toMahommet.

Cheerfully unaware of the unfair advantage he had over the universe, Hank Quilter was trading tales ofhis last leave with his new messmates.



"You certainly have all the luck, Hank," said a man whose permanent sugary grin had earned him thename of Honeybunch. "I'd really envy you that girl if I didn't think you were making up half those storiesabout her."

"If you won't take my word, I'm quite prepared to beatyou up till you do," Quilter said.

"Truth through violence!" someone laughed.

"Show me a better way," Quilter said, grinning in turn. Since what he had told them contained verylittle exaggeration, he was content to have them doubt bis word; had he been lying, it would have been adifferent matter.

"Tell you another funny thing happened to me," hesaid. "Day before I got to the ship, I got a letter froma guy who messed with me on theMariestopes, nice enough guy called Walthamstone, a Britisher.His first night earth-side, he got drunk and did a spot of housebreaking. The cops caught him atit and sent him down for a term. The way he put it, it sounds he was a bit psychotic at the time.Anyhow, in the jug he meets a pansy, and this pansy turns old Walthamstone the same way -works on him, you know, and turns him the same way! So when they're released, Wai goes tolive with this queen in Ghettoville. Now it seems they're good as married!"

Quilter burst into laughter at the thought of it.

A bearded youngster who had not spoken yet, name of Samuel Melmoth, said quietly, "That doesn'tseem very funny to me. We all need love of some sort, as your earlier stories prove. I should havethought your friend deserved some pity."

Quilter stopped laughing and looked at Melmoth. He wiped his mouth on his hand.

"What are you trying to give me, Mac? I'm only laughing at the odd things that happen to people. Andwhy should Wally need your goddamned pity? He had a free choice, didn't he? He could do what heliked when he came out of jug, couldn't he?"

Melmoth began to look as stubborn and hurt as his father who bore a different name.



"By what you say, he was seduced."

"Okay, okay, he was seduced. Now you tell me if we aren't all seduced at some time or other in someway or other. That's when our principles are betrayed, isn't it? But if our principles were stronger, thenwe wouldn't give in, would we? So what happens to Wai is his own look out."

"But if he'd had some friends -"

"It's got nothing to do with friends or seducers or enemies or anything else. That's what I'm saying. It'sWai's own look out. Anything that happens to us is our own responsibility."

"Ah, now, that's a load of garbage," Honeybunch protested.

"You're all sick, that's your trouble," Quilter said.

"Honeybunch is right," Melmoth said. "We all start out in life with more trouble than we can sort out allour days."

"Look, feller, nobody asked your opinion in the first place. Speak for yourself," Quilter said.

"I am."

"Well, kindly refrain from opening your gob on my behalf. I bear my own woes on my own back, andfurthermore I believe man possesses free will. I do what I want to do, see?"

At that moment, the speaker system crunched into life: "Attention. Will Rating Hank Quilter, Mess No.307. Hank •Quilter. Mess No. 307, proceed at once to the Flight Advisor's Office on the ScanningDeck, Flight Advisor's Office .on the Scanning Deck. That is all."



Grumbling, Quilter moved to obey.

Flight Advisor Bryant Lattimore did not like his office on the Scanning Deck. It was decorated in themodern so. called Ur-Organic style, with walls, floor and ceiling continuously patterned with bas-reliefplastic of varied tones. The pattern represented surface crystals of molybdenum oxide under amagnification of 75,000. It was designed to put him in harmony with the Buzzardian universe.

Flight Advisor Bryant Lattimore did like his job.

When the knock came at his door, and Rating Quilter entered, Lattimore nodded him amiably to achair.

"Quilter, you know why we are hitting vacuum. We intend to discover the home planet of the aliensthat I believe are popularly known as rhinomen. My particular task is to formulate in advance some of thelines ofapproach we can use when we have uncovered this planet. Now I happened to flip through thecrew lists and came on your name. You were on theMariestopes, were you not, when this first groupof rhinomen was discovered?"

"Sir, I was in the Exploration Corps then, sir. I was one of the men who actually came across thecreatures. I shot three or four of them as they charged me. You see -"

"This is very interesting, Quilter, but may we just have this a little more slowly?"

Quilter told his story in elaborate and elaborated detail, while Lattimore listened and gazed at themolybdenum crystals in which he was imprisoned and nodded his head and intermittently loosened aspeck of dried mucas from inside one of his nostrils.

"You're certain these creatures attacked you?" he asked, removing his spectacles to stare at Quilter.

Quilter hesitated, weighed Lattimore up, and decided on the truth as he saw it.



"Let's say they came towards us, sir. So we let 'em have it without going into committee first."

Lattimore smiled and resumed his spectacles.

When he had dismissed the rating, he pressed a bell and Mrs. Hilary Warhoon appeared. She lookedvery smart in a flared mock-male with recessed carnation paltroons; the glint in her eyes showed howdelighted she was to be loose in the Buzzardian universe.

"Had Quilter anything of interest to say?" she asked, sitting down at the table next to Lattimore.

"Only inadvertently. He's read his newscasts and his poppers, and on the surface his attitude is thecivilized one: that we don't know much about the rhinomen, as he calls them, and that we give them thebenefit of the doubt until we find whether or not they are glorified hogs. Underneath, and not very farunderneath, heknows the critters are just big game, and to be shot like big game, because he has shotthem like big game. You know, even if it doesturn out that they are brilliant thinkers and all that, ourrelationship with them is going to be precious damn difficult."

"Yes. Because if they are brilliant thinkers, their thought is going to be remarkably different from ourthought."

"Check. And not that only. Philosophers who live in mud are not going to cut much ice with Earth; themasses have always been a deal more impressed by mud than by philosophers."

"Fortunately, what the masses think won't affect us out here."

"You think not? Heck, you're the cosmoclectic, Hilary, but I've been in TP before, and I know astrange psychology rules on shipboard. It's like an exaggerated version of Kipling's 'East of Suez ...',how's it go now? 'Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, where there ain'tno Ten Commandments....' The best are very like the worst when you step on a planet lying underanother sun, Hilary. And you feel that - well, it's a sort of irresponsibility - you feel that you can doanything you like because nobody on Earth will judge you for it: while at the same tune, 'just what youlike' is naturally part of what the masses of Earth would like to do, had they the licence."



Mrs. Warhoon tapped four pliant fingers on the table.

"You make it sound very sinister."

"Hell, the irrational drives of man are sinister! Don't think I'm generalizing. I've seen this mood comeover a man too often. It was probably that that undid Ainson. And I feel it in myself."

"Now I'm afraid I don't see what you mean."

"Don't look so offended. I couldfeel that your Quilter really enjoyed shooting our friends. The thrill ofthe chase! If I saw a bunch of 'em nipping over the veldt. I wouldn't mind a shot myself."

Mrs. Warhoon's voice was slightly chilled.

"What do you intend to do if we find the ETA home planet?"

"You know what I intend to do: act according to logic and reason. This outfit is for business, notpleasure. But I'm also aware that there's a part of me saying; Lattimore, these creatures don't feel pain;how can anything have a spirit or a soul or be intelligent or appreciate some unimaginable equivalent ofByron's poems or Borodin's Second Symphony if it does not suffer? And I say to myself, whatever giftsit has, if it has not pain, then it is for ever beyond the reach of my comprehension."

"But that is just the challenge, that is why we are having to try to comprehend, that -" She lookedattractive with her fists clenched.

"I know all that. But you are talking to me in the voice of intellect," Lattimore said, leaning back in hischair. It was pleasurable shooting Hilary this all-male line. "I'm also hearing a sort of Quilter-voice, avoxpopuli, a cry not only from the heart but from the bowels. It says that whatever talents these critters mayhave, they are less than buffaloes or zebras or tigers, and the primitive urge comes up in me just as it didin Quilter, and I want to shoot them."



She had eight ruby-tipped fingers drumming on the table now, but she managed to look into his faceand laugh.

"You are playing an intellectual game with yourself, Bryant. I'm sure that even the base Quilter offeredexcuses for his actions. Therefore even he feels guilt for his actions; you, being more intelligent, cansavour your guilt beforehand, and so control yourself."

"East of Suez, an intelligent man can find more excuses for himself than a cretin can."

Seeing vexation on her face, he relented.

"As you say, I'm probably playing a game with myself. Or with you."

He placed a hand over her finger-tips as carelessly as if they were molybdenum crystals. She withdrewthem.

"I wish to change the topic of conversation, Bryant I have a suggestion that I think may be fruitful. Doyou think you could get me a volunteer?"

"For what?"

"To be marooned on a strange planet."

Back on the strange planet called Earth, the third Politan called Blug Lugug was in a terrible state ofmental confusion. He was strapped to a bench with a series of strong canvas straps that passed acrosswhat was left of his body. A number of wires and cables ran from machines that stood silent or gargled tothemselves on one side of the room and climbed on to his body or into his various orifices. One cable inparticular ran from one instrument in particular worked by one man in particular; the man was dressed ina white sort of clothing, and when he moved a lever with his hand, something without meaning happenedin the third Politan's brain. This meaningless thing was more awful than anything the third Politan had



known existed. He saw now how right the Sacred Cosmopolitan had been when he used to termbad todescribe these thinlegs. Here wasbad bad bad: it reared up before him sturdy and strong and hygienic,and gnawed away his intelligence bit by bit.

The something without meaning came again. A gulf opened where there had been something growing,something delightful, memories or promises, who knows?, but something never to be replaced.

One of the thinlegs spoke. Mainly, in gasps, the Politan imitated what had been said:"noneuralresponsethere/ either. He/doesnthave/apainresponsein/his/wholebody!"

He still clung to the notion that when they realized he could imitate their speech, they would beintelligent enough to stop the things they were doing. Whatever theywere doing, whatever inside theirmad little minds they imagined they were doing, they were spoiling his chances of entering the carrionstage; for already they had removed two of his limbs with a saw - from the corner of his misting eyes hewatched the bin in which they had been deposited - and since there were no ammp trees here, thepossibility of his continuing the cycles of being was remote. Nothingness confronted him.

He cried an imitation of their words but, forgetting their limitations, pushed it high into his upper voicerange. The sounds came distorted; his ockpu orifices were clogged with tiny instruments like leeches.

He needed comfort from the Sacred Cosmopolitan, his worshipped father-mother. But theCosmopolitan had gone, no doubt to the same gradual dismemberment. The grorgs had gone; he caughttheir almost supersonic cries answering him in lament from a distant part of the room. Then thesomething without meaning burst over hun again, so that he could no longer hear - but what was it that hehad been able to... been able to what? Something else had gone.

In his dizziness, he saw that a new figure had joined the figures in white. In his dizziness, he thought herecognized the new figure. It was - or it was very like - the figure that had performed the dung ritual abrief time ago.

Now the figure cried something, and through the growing dizziness the Politan tried to cry the samething back, to show it had recognized him: "Ican'tbeartowatchyou'redoingsomethingthatshouldneverbedone!"

But the thinlegs, if it was that specific one, gave no sign of recognition. He covered the front part of his



upper head with his hands and went fast from the room, almost as if-

The something without meaning came again, and the white figures all looked eagerly at theirinstruments.

Tipped far back until his toes were level with his head, the Director of the Exozoo lay in his therapadand sucked a glucose mixture through a teat. He was being calmed by a young men. now a member ofthe Exploration Corps with an Explorer's certificate, who had once trained under him at the zoo. GussiePhipps, who had flown in from Macao, offered comfort.

"You're not so tough as you used to be, Sir Mihaly. You ought to change to synthetic foods; they'rebetter for you. Fancy letting a vivisection upset youl How many vivisections have you performedyourself?"

"I know, I know, you needn't remind me. It was just the sight of that particular poor creature there onthe stone, slowly being chopped into little bits and not registering anything detectable as pain or fear."

"Which should make it better rather than worse."

"Heavens, I know it should! But it was so darnedun-resentfull I had the feeling for a moment I was inat a preview of how man will treat any intelligent opposition it meets out there." He gestured vaguelytowards the patterned ceiling. "Or perhaps I mean that beneath the scientific etiquette of the vivisectionbench I heard the savage drums of ancient man, still beating away like mad for a blood-letting session.What is man up to, Gussie.?"

"Such an outburst of pessimism is unlike you. We're coming away from the mud, away from theprimeval slime, away from the animal, towards the spiritual. We have a long way to go, but -"

"Yes, it's an answer I've often used myself. We may not be very nice now but we'll be nicer at someunspecified future time. But is it true? Oughtn't we to have stayed in the mud? Mightn't it be morehealthy and sane down there? And are we just giving ourselves excuses to carry on as we always did?Think how many primitive rites are still with us in a thin disguise: vivisection, giving in marriage, cosmetics,hunting, wars, circumcision - no, I don't want to think of any more. When we do make anadvance, it's ina ghastly false direction - like the synth food fad, inspired by last century's dietary madnesses andthrombosis scares. It's time I retired, Gussie, got away while I'm not too aged, moved to some simpler



clime where the sun shines. I've always believed that the amount of thought that goes on inside a man'shead is in inverse proportion to the amount of sunshine that goes on outside it."

The door globe chimed.

"I'm expecting nobody," Pasztor said, with an irritability he rarely showed. "Go and see who it is forme, Gussie, and shoo them away. I want to hear all about Macao from you."

Phipps disappeared, to return with Enid Ainson, weeping.

Nipping with momentary savagery on the end of his glucose teat, Pasztor jacked himself into a lessrelaxed position and stuck a leg out of the therapad.

"It's Bruce, Mihaly!" Enid cried. "Bruce has disappeared. I'm sure he's drowned himself. Oh Mihaly,he's been so difficult! What can I do?"

"When did you last see him?"

"He couldn't stand the disgrace of being turned down for theGansas. I know he's drowned himself.He often threatened he would."

"When did you last see him, Enid?"

"Whatever shall I do? I must let poor Aylmer know!"

Pasztor climbed out of the pad. He gripped Phipps' elbow as he moved towards the technivision.

"We'll have to hear about Macao some other time, Gussie," he said.



He began to technicall the police, while Enid wept in a businesslike way behind him.

Bruce Ainson was already a fair distance beyond the reach of Earth police.

On the day after theGansas was ejected into space, a much less publicized flight began. Blasting froma small operational spaceport on the east coast of England, a systemship started its long haul across theecliptic. System-ships were an altogether different sort of spaceship from the starships. They carried noTP drive. They fuelled on ions, consuming most of their bulk as they travelled. They were built for dutieswithin the solar system only, and most of them that left Britain nowadays were military craft.

The 7.5.Brunner was no exception. It was a trooper, packed to the hull with reinforcements for theAnglo-Brazilian war on Charon. Among those reinforcements was an ageing and troubled nonentitynamed B. Ainson, who had been mustered as a clerk.

That sullen outcast of the solar family, Charon, known generally to soldiers as the Deep Freeze Planet,had been discovered telescopically by the Wilkins-Pressman Lunar Observatory almost two decadesbefore it was visited by man. The First Charon Expedition (on which was a brilliant young Hungariandramatist and biologist named Mihaly Pasztor) discovered it to be the father of all billiard balls, a globesome three hundred miles in diameter (307'558 miles, according to the latest edition of the BrazilianMilitary Manual, 309'567 miles according to its British equivalent). This globe was without feature, itssurface smooth in texture, white in colour, slippery and almost without chemical properties. It was hard,but not extremely hard. It could be bored into with high-speed drills.

To say that Charon had no atmosphere was inaccurate. The smooth white surface was theatmosphere, frozen out over the long and unspeakably tedious eons during which Charon, a travellingmorgue without benefit of bones, trundled its bulk about its orbit, connected by what hardly seemedmore than coincidence with a first magnitude star called Sol. When the atmosphere was dug andanalysed, it was found to consist of a mixture of inert gasses packed together into a form unknown to,and un-reproducible in, Earth's laboratories. Somewhere below this surface, seismographic reportsindicated, was the real Charon: a rocky and pulseless heart two hundred miles across.

The Deep Freeze Planet was an ideal place on which to hold wars.

Despite their excellent effect on trade, wars have a deleterious effect on the human body; so theybecame, during the second decade of the twenty-first century, codified, regulated, umpired, as much



subject to skill as a baseball game or to law as a judge's table talk. Because Earth was very crowded,wars were banished to Charon. There, the globe had been marked out with tremendous lines of latitudeand longitude, like a celestial draughts board.

Earth was by no means peacefully inclined. In consequence, there were frequently waiting lists forspace on Charon, the lists consisting mainly of belligerent nations who wished to book regions about theequator, where the light for fighting was slightly better. The Anglo-Brazilian war occupied Sectors159-260, adjacent to the current Javanese-Guinean conflict, and had been dragging on since the year1999. A Contained Conflict it was called.

The rules of Contained Conflict were many and involved. For instance, the weapons of destructionwere rigidly defined. And certain highly qualified social ranks -who might bring their side unfairadvantages - were forbidden on Charon. Penalties for breaking such rules were very high. And, for allthe precautions that were taken, casualties among combatants were also high.

In consequence, the flower of English youth, to say nothing of blooms of a blowsier age, were neededon Charon; Bruce Ainson had taken advantage of that factto enlist as a man without social rank and toslip quietly out of the public eye. A century earlier, he would probably have joined the Foreign Legion.

As the little ion-driven trooper carried him now over the ten light hours that separated Earth andCharon, he might, had he known of it, have reflected with contempt on Sir Mihaly's glib remark that theamount of thought in a man's head is in inverse proportion to the amount of sun outside it. He might haveso reflected, if only theBrunner permitted reflection among the men packed between its decks head totail; but Ainson, together with all his companions, went out to the Deep Freeze Planet in deep freeze.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

One of the ways - if you were an intellectual - of proving you were not an intellectual was to stroll upand down the Scanning Deck with the sleeves of your tunic rolled untidily to the elbow. You put one ofthe big new corky mescahales between your lips, and you strolled up and down laughing heartily at yourown jokes or at those of your companion. That way, the ratings who came up here for a gaze at theuniverse could see for themselves that you were human.



The faulty ingredient in this prescription, Lattimore thought, was his current companion, Marcel Gleet,the Second Navigation Officer. It would have constituted a major solecism, almost a solar solecism, tohave laughedat what Gleet said. Gleet was wedded to seriousness, and the marriage was much like afuneral.

"... would seem a substantial possibility," he was saying, "that the star cluster, the co-ordinates ofwhich I have just mentioned, may be the home of our alien species. There are six stars in the clusterhaving between them some fifteen orbiting planets. I was talking with Mellor of Geocred last watch, andhe infers that as many as six of them are likely to prove Earth-type."

One certainly couldn't laugh at that, Lattimore thought, though there were several crew about on thedeck, not a few of them laughing - mainly at Mrs. Warhoon's notice, which was pinned conspicuously tothe main notice board.

"Since all of these six Earth-type bodies," Gleet continued, "are within two to three light years ofClementina, they would seem to constitute a reasonable area in which to pursue our search. A furtheradvantage is that the six bodies are all within light days of each other, an immense help with regard toflight promptitude."

At least a chuckle of agreement might be inserted there.

Gleet continued his discourse, but the chime of a watch bell reminded him of the reason for his comingup to the Scanning Deck, and he moved away in the direction of the Navigation Bay. Lattimore turned toone of the deep oval ports, and gazed out through the hull of the ship while he listened to the commentsof a group of three men behind him.

" 'Contribution to the future of mankind!' That I like!" one of them exclaimed, reading from theannouncement.

"Yes, but you notice that after that appeal to your better nature, they cover themselves by offering youa pension for life," said one of his companions.

"It would have to be higher stakes than that to get me to maroon myself on an alien planet for fiveyears," the third said.



"I'd chip in too, just to get rid of you," said the first

Lattimore nodded to his ghostly reflection as the ancient form of badinage by insult ran its predictablecourse. He often wondered at that accepted method of verbal assault which passed for wit; no doubt itwas a way of sublimating a man's hatred for his fellows; what else could it be? He was not at allperturbed at the comments passed on Mrs. Warhoon's notice; frigid she might be, but he thought she hada good idea there; because there were many varieties of men, her notice would eventually bear fruit.

He stared at the universe which theGansas, in a Buz-zardian way, was currently surrounding. Againsta uterine blackness stood a number of close and fuzzy bars of light. It was like a drunken fly's close-upview of a comb, lacking definition and forming an affront to the optic nerve.

But, as the scientists pointed out, the human optic nerve was not adjusted to reality. Because the truenature of the universe could only be glimpsed through the trans-ponential equations, it followed that thisfuzzy grill (which made one feel, come to think of it, like a minor crustacean with the baleen of a bluewhale grinning down at one) was what the stars "really" looked like. Plato, reflected Lattimore, thoushouldst be living at this hour! He swung away and contrived to turn his thoughts similarly away towardsthe thought of food.

Say what you liked, there was nothing like a good synthetic stew for calling armistice between a manand his universe.

"But, Mihaly," Enid Ainson was saying, "Mihaly, for years - since Bruce first introduced me to you,I've thought you were secretly attracted to me. I mean the way you looked at me. And when youconsented to be Aylmer's godfather - I mean you've always led me to think. ..." She pressed her handstogether. "And you were onlyamusing yourself...."

He was drawn up very formally, a cliff against the tide "of her pathos.

"Perhaps I have a naturally chivalrous attitude to ladies, Enid, but you have read too much into it. Whatcan I do but thank you deeply for your flattering suggestion, but really...."

Suddenly she jerked her head up. She had eaten enough at the apple of humiliation; it was time to let



anger have its turn. Imperiously she gestured at him.

"You need say no more. I will tell you only that the thought of you and your imagined fondness - howoften I foolishly imagined that it was only your friendship with Bruce that kept you from making advancestowards me! -your hollow fondness has been the only factor keeping me sane over these last fewimpossible years."

"Come, I am certain you exaggerate -"

"I am talking! I see now that all your airs and graces, all this phoney Hungarian glamour you put on,they ah* mean nothing. You are just a false front, Mihaly, a romantic who dislikes romances, a - a ladies'man who is afraid of ladies. Good-bye to you, Mihaly, and damn you! Through you I have lost both myhusband and my son."

The door slammed behind her.

They had been talking in the hall. Mihaly put his hands up to his burning cheeks. He was shaking. Heaverted his eyes from the sight of himself in the mirror.

The terrible thing was, that without having the least interest in Enid physically, he had admired her spiritand, knowing what a difficult man Bruce was behind the scenes, he had indeed encouraged her withwarm glances and occasional pressures of the hand - purely to illustrate to her that someone was capableof seeing her virtues. Ah, beware, indeed beware of pity!

"Darling, has she gone?"

He heard the tiny summoning voice of his mistress from the living room. Doubtless she would haveeavesdropped on the scene with Enid. Without eagerness, he went to hear what she had to say about itall. There was no doubt that the charming Ah Chi, after her painting holiday in the Persian Gulf orwherever she had been, would be horribly inquisitive over the whole incident.

It was only a watch after Bryant Lattimore had felt like a minor crustacean that Mrs. Warhoon got avolunteer. The discovery sent her in a flutter into the heart of the molybdenum crystal belt. Lattimore



quickly took the chance to seize her by her fleshy upper arms.

"Steady now, Hilary! I hate to see a pretty cosmoclec-tician in a tizzy. So you wanted a volunteer, soyou've got him; now go ahead and give him the pitch."

Mrs. Warhoon freed herself, though not without getting appetizingly disarranged. What strong brutesmen were! Heaven alone knew what this one would be like when he got metaphorically east of Suez atnext planetfall. Well, at least a woman had her own defences: she could always give in.

"This volunteer is rather special, Mr. Lattimore. Does the name Samuel Melmoth mean anything toyou?"

"Not a thing. No, wait! Ye gods and little fishes! It's Ainson's son! You meanhe's volunteered?"

"He has managed to make himself rather unpopular down on the messdeck, and in consequence feelsrather anti-social. A friend of his called Quilter gave him a black eye.'1

"Quilter again, eh? Likely leader material there; I must speak to the captain about him."

"I’d like you to come and stand by me while I brief this young Ainson, if you aren't too busy."

"Hilary, I'd stand by you at any time."

The Ur-Organic style (like all art movement labels, the name was inaccurate to the point ofmeaninglessness) hadperpetrated a nasty whimsy in Mrs. Warhoon's office. She and Lattimore steppedinto a popinjay's heart. Under a magnification of 200,000, the fibrous tissue ran and knotted in bas-reliefover ceiling and floor as well as walls. In the middle of it, lonely, green about one eye, sat AylmerAin-son, his head indistinct against a galaxy of striated aortal muscle. He stood when Mrs. Warhoon andLattimore entered.

Poor little devil, thought Lattimore. The lady here is somewhat up a gum tree in concluding that it was



anything so simple as a black eye that led this boy to want to maroon himself on a strange planet. Hiswhole history -and his parents' history, and so their parents' history, and so back to those first deludeddimwits who decided that animal life wasn't good enough for them - everything has led to this act of his;the black eye was just a clincher. And who would say, who could be a fly-sized god and see it all, thatthe clincher was accidental? Maybe the poor kid had to provoke the assault to reassure himself that theoutside world was the aggressor.

Somewhere, Lattimore thought (but with as much complacency as trepidation, as he realized) myupbringing took the wrong turning, or I would not diagnose so much meaning from the hangdog-proudway this kiddie stood up for us.

"Sit down, Mr. Melmoth," Mrs. Warhoon said, in a pleasant voice Lattimore found unpleasant. "This isthe Flight Advisor, Mr. Lattimore. He knows as well as anyone the communication problems you will beup against, and can give you pointers on the subject."

"How do you do, sir," young Ainson said, smiling round his puffy eye.

"Firstly, the larger programme," said Mrs. Warhoon, and chose a military phrase with winsomeself-consciousness, "just to put you in the picture, as they say. When we come out of TP flight, we shallbe in a star cluster thatcontains at least fifteen planets, of which six, to judge by a remote technivisualsurvey conducted by theMarie-stopes, have Earth-type atmospheres. Our aliens, as you know,were found beside a space vehicle - whether it belonged to them or to an allied species, wehope to determine soon. But its suggests that we may find space flight established in thiscluster. In that case we shall need to survey all inhabited planets. It was planned before we leftEarth that on the first such planet we should deposit an unmanned observation post. Since then,however, I have had a further idea, which Captain Pestalozzi has agreed to let me carry out.

"My idea is simply to leave a volunteer with the observation post Since we could furnish him withprovisions and food synthesizers, and the natives, as we know by our captive specimens, will not behostile, such a volunteer would be quite secure from danger. As we now see, you have consented to bethat volunteer."

Safe in the blown-up popinjay heart, they all smiled at each other.

But does he detect, Lattimore asked himself, the lie in Mrs. Warhoon's words? Who knows yet whathells these rhinomen may create on their home ground, who knows if there isn't some man-devouringform of fanner who uses the rhinomen as greedily as we use the Improved Danish Landrace pig? And of



course the old Lattimoronic question, who knows what hells this latter day Saint Anthony will create forhimself in his alien wilderness? That ill wind cannot be sheltered from, but the others can.

"And, naturally, we will see you are well-armed," he said, aware by Mrs. Warhoon's glance that shesaw the remark as a minor betrayal.

Compressing her lips, she turned back to Ainson.

"Now to what we expect you to do. We expect you to learn to communicate with the aliens."

"But the experts couldn't do that on Earth. How do youexpect me -"

"We shall train you, Mr. Melmoth. There are nine whole ship's days before we break out of TP, andmuch can be learnt in that time. On Earth, it may have been that an impossible task was attempted; on thealiens' home planet, when we can see them in their own context, the task will be much lighter. Indeed, thealiens should be very much more communicative in their own environment. We think that probably thewonders of Earth, the size of our starships, and so on, may have partly paralysed their responses.

"As you may know, we had six alien bodies on which thorough dissections were performed. Ourspecimens were of different ages, some young, some old. From analysis of their bone tissue, we thinkthey may attain ages of some hundreds of years; their insusceptibility to pain tends to support this theory.If this is so, then it should follow that they would have protracted childhoods.

"Now I get to my next point. The learning time of any species is in its early days, its babydays, andwherever we go in the galaxy we can expect to find the same rule applying. Children on Earth whothrough some misadventure learn no language are at twelve or thirteen too old to learn one. This hasbeen proved many times with babies, for instance, in India, who have been tended by monkeys orwolves. Once the time of childhood is past, they are past acquiring the gift of speech.

"So I have reasoned, Mr. Melmoth, that the only time that the aliens might be able to learn our tonguewould be during their early years. It will be your job to live as close as you possibly can to one suchinfant alien.



"It may be - we don't deny it - that it will prove impossible to communicate with these creatures. Butthe proof must be conclusive. After we have left you, we shall go to investigate the other planets in thecluster; no doubt we shall capture a group of the aliens and take them backto Earth, or even establish abase on one of the other planets, but that will have to wait on local conditions. Meanwhile, you will be myNumber One project."

For a moment, Aylmer said nothing. He was thinking, in fact, about the winds of chance, and howwildly they blew. Only a brief while ago he was so stickily involved in the web of personal relationshipsformed by his father, his mother, his girl, and, to a lesser degree, his uncle Mihaly. Now that he wasmiraculously free, there was one question in particular he wanted to ask: "How long will you be leavingme on this planet?"

"Well, it will be for no longer than a year, that I promise," Mrs. Warhoon told him, and was relieved tosee his frown dissolve. They all smiled at each other again, though both men looked ill at ease.

"How does all that sound to you?" Mrs. Warhoon asked Aylmer Ainson sympathetically.

For heck sake tell her that you realize you have stuck your neck out too far to stomach, thoughtLattimore, toying with a metaphor he had mixed some days earlier. Tell her that you can't afford to paysuch a high price for the catharsis you need. Or look at me for assistance and I'll put in a word for you.

The boy did look at Lattimore, but there were pride and excitement rather than appeal in the glance.

Okay, Lattimore thought, so my diagnosis was a complete cock-up. So he's a hero rather than acouch case. A man is his own responsibility.

"I feel very honoured to be given such an assignment," Aylmer Ainson said.

CHAPTER TWELVE



Like a dog that has been harshly spoken to. the universe had resumed its customary position. Nolonger did it cause theGansas to surround it Instead, it surrounded the big ship, and the big ship sat onthe planet with its nose in the air.

In honour of the ship's captain, the planet had been christened Pestalozzi - though as Navigator Gleethad pointed out there were more pleasant names.

Everything on Pestalozzi was fine.

Its air contained the right admixture of oxygen at ground level, and lacked any vapours that mightoffend terrestrial lungs. Even better, it harboured - and they had Med Section's word for it - nobacterium or virus that Med Section could not cope with if necessary.

TheGansas had landed near the equator. The midday temperature had not risen above twenty degreesCelsius, but at night it had not sunk below nine degrees.

The period of axial revolution corresponded conveniently with Earth's, taking a notch overtwenty-four hours and nine minutes. Which meant that a point on the equator would be travelling fasterthan an equivalent point on Earth, for one great disadvantage about Pestalozzi was that it was a worldwith considerable mass.

Rest periods had been ordered after midday mess. Mostof the crew had voluntarily started slimming.For seven stone weaklings on Pestalozzi weighed twenty-one stones at the equator.

There were compensations for this crippling tripling, chief among which was the discovery of thealiens.

When it had sat on its haunches smelling the air, observing solar emissions, ground radioactivity.Diagnostic bathytherms, and other phenomena, for two days, theGansas emitted small snooper craft. Aswell as having an exploratory function, these flights were calculated to relieve cosmophobia.

Honeybunch sat at the controls of one of these craft, flying according to Lattimore's instructions.



Lattimore was in a state of great excitement, which communicated itself to the rating sitting next to him.Hank Quilter. They both gripped the rail and stared at the tawny lands rippling beneath them like theflank of a vast and vastly galloping beast....

A beast we'll learn to tame and ride, thought Lattimore, trying to analyse the choking sensation in hisbreast. This is what that whole school of minor writers was fumbling to say last century before spacetravel even began, and, ye gods and little fishes, they had more than was acknowledged. Because this isthe genuine and only thing, to feel the squeeze in your cells of a different gravity, to ride over a groundinnocent of all thought of man, to be the first that ever burst.

It was like getting your childhood back, a big savage childhood; once, long ago, you'd gone behind thelavender bushes at the bottom of the garden and had stepped into terra incognita. Here it was again, andevery stalk of grass a lavender bush.

He checked himself.

"Hover." he ordered. "Alien life ahead."

They hovered, and beneath them a broad and lazy river was fringed with salad beds. In isolatedgroups therhinomen worked or sheltered behind trees.

Lattimore and Quilter looked at each other.

"Set her down." Lattimore ordered.

Honeybunch set her down more daintily than he had ever handled woman.

"Better have your rifles in case there's trouble," Lattimore said.

They picked up their rifles and climbed with care to the ground. Ankles were easily broken at currentweights, despite the hastily devised supports that they all wore to thigh height under their trousers.



A line of trees stood about eighty yards west of them. The three men headed for the trees, pickingtheir way through rows of cultivated plants that resembled bolting lettuce, except that their leaves were aslarge and coarse as rhubarb leaves.

The trees were enormous, but notable chiefly for what looked like malformation of their trunks. Theyswelled and spread, each of them double lobed; they approximated the shape of the aliens with theirplump bodies and two sharp heads. From their crests, aerial roots tapered, many of them, like crudefingers. The foliage bristling on their topknots grew in a sort of stiff turbulence, so that again Lattimore feltthe shiver of wonder; here was something his weary intellect had not contemplated before.

As the three moved towards these trees, rifles half-raised in traditional gesture, four-winged birds -butterflies the size of eagles - clattered out of the tousled foliage, circled, and made away towards thelow hills on the far side of the river. Beneath the trees, half a dozen rhinomen stood to watch the menapproach. Their smell was familiar to Lattimore. He released the safety button of his rifle.

"I didn't realise they were so big," Honeybunch said softly. "Are they going to charge us? We can't run-hadn't we better get back to the snooper?"

"They're all ready to run," Quilter said. He wiped his wet lips with his hand.

Lattimore had judged that the mildly swivelling heads of the aliens indicated no more than curiosity, buthe welcomed this token that Quilter felt as much in control of the situation as he did.

"Keep walking, Honeybunch," he said.

But Honeybunch had glanced back over his shoulder at their craft. He let out a cry.

"Hey, they're attacking from the rear!"

Seven of the aliens, two of them big chaps with grey hides, approached the snooper from behind,



were moving towards it inquisitively, were only a few yards from it. Honeybunch lugged the rifle up to hiships and fired.

His first shot missed. The second found a target. The men heard the californium slug hit with a forceequivalent to seventeen tons of T.N.T. One of the big grey fellows heeled over, a crater torn in thesmooth terrain of his back.

The other creatures moved to their companion as Honeybunch's rifle came up again.

"Hold your fire!" Lattimore said.

His voice was cut off by the roar of Quilter's rifle on his left Ahead, one of the smaller aliens burst, ahead and shoulders blown away.

Unknown tendons in Lattimore's neck and face tightened. He saw the rest of the stupid things standingthere, nonplussed, but giving no appearance of fear or anger, certainly showing no inclination to run. Theycould feel nothing! If they had not sense enough to see the power of men, they should be taught it. Therewasn't a species living that didn't know about man and his firepower. What were they good for but toserve as targets?

Lattimore brought his rifle up. It was a short mechanism with collapsible butt, semi-silenced,semi-recoilless, firinga 0'5 slug on single or automatic. It went off just as Quilter fired again.

They stood there shoulder to shoulder, firing until the seven aliens were blown asunder. NowHoneybunch was crying for them to stop. Lattimore and Quilter recognized each other's expressions.

"If we went up in the snooper and flew low, we might throw a scare into them and get a movingtarget," Lattimore said. He polished up his spectacles, which had misted, on the front of his shirt.

Quilter wiped his dry lips on the back of his hand.



"Somebody ought to teach those slugs how to run," he agreed.

Mrs. Warhoon, meanwhile, stood speechless before perfection. She had been invited aboard thecaptain's snooper, and they had descended to investigate what looked like an untidy cluster of ruins in theinterior of the equatorial continent.

There they had found proof of the aliens' intellectual status. There were the mines, the foundries, therefineries, the factories, the laboratories, the launching pads - all domesticated down to the level of acottage industry. The entire industrial process had turned into a folk art; the spaceships were homespun.They knew then, as they walked unmolested among the snorting aliens, that they were in the midst of animmemorial race. Here was an antiquity beyond the imagining of man.

Captain Pestalozzi had stopped and lit a mescahale.

"Degenerate." he had said. "A race in decline, that's obvious."

"I don't think anything is obvious. We are too far from Earth for anything to be obvious." Mrs.Warhoon said.

"You've only got to look at the things," the captain had replied. He had little sympathy for Mrs.Warhoon;she was too knowledgeable, and when she wandered away from his party, he felt nothing but aslight relief.

It was then that she had stumbled on perfection.

The few buildings were scattered, and informal rather than negligible architecturally. All walls slopedinwards towards curving roofs; they were built either of bricks or precision-shaped stones, both materialsbeing wrought to interlock, so that no mortar, or cement was used. Whether this was a style dictated bythe 3G gravity or by artistic whim, Mrs. Warhoon was content to leave undecided until later. She dislikedthe sort of uninformed conclusions jumped to by the captain. With the thought of him bearing on hermind, she entered one of the buildings no more elaborate than its neighbours, and there the statue stood.

It was perfection.



But perfection is a cold word. This had the warmth as well as the aloofness of achievement

Her throat constricted, she walked round it

God knew what it was doing standing in a stinking shack.

It was a statue of one of the aliens. She did not need telling it had also been wrought by one of them.What she did need telling was whether the work had been done yesterday or thirty-six centuries ago.After a while, when this thought had made the circuit of her brain several times, it registered on herattention, and she realized why she had postulated thirty-six centuries. That would be the age of theEgyptian XVIIIth Dynasty statue of a seated figure she often went to contemplate in the British Museum.This work, carved like the other out of a dark granite, had some of the same qualities.

The alien stood on his six limbs, in perfect balance, one of his pointed heads a shade more elevatedthan the other. Between the catenary curve of his spine and the parabola of his belly lay the greatsymmetrical boat of his body. She felt curiously humble to be in the room with him; for,this was beauty,and for the first time she held in the hollow of her understanding a knowledge of what beauty was: thereconciliation between humanity and geometry, between the personal and the impersonal, between thespirit and the body.

Now Mrs. Warhoon shook inside her mock-male. She saw a lot of things which, because they wereimportant, she did not wildly want to see.

She saw that here was a civilized race that had come to its maturity by a very different path fromman's. For this race from the start and continuously (or without more than a brief intermission) had neverbeen in conflict with nature and the natural scene that sustained it. It had remained in rapport, undivorced.Consequently, its struggle towards the sort of abilities living in this shaped granite - ah. but thephilosopher and the sculptor, the man of the spirit and the man with the instrument, had been one here! -was the struggle with its natural repose (torpor, many would have said); while man's struggle had in themain been an outward struggle, against forces that he saw as being in opposition to him.

As surely and simply as Mrs. Warhoon saw all this, and before she embellished it for her report, shesaw that mankind could not fail to misunderstand this lifeform: for here was an equipoise that would,could, neither oppose nor flee from him. As this was a race without pain, as it was a race without fear, it



would remain alien to man.

She had her arm about the flank of the statue, her temple resting on its polished side.

She wept

For all these perceptions - which came to her on the wing as she walked once round the figure - weremainly intellectual, and fled as they came. In their place grew a womanly perception she could less easily,afterwards, deny.

She perceived the humanity in the statue. It was thishumanity that had reminded her of the Egyptianstatue. She saw that although this was an abstraction, yet it retained humanity, or the quality humans callhumanity; and it was something that mankind had lost and might have retained. She wept for the loss: herloss, everyone's loss.

It was then that the distant shouts broke in on her melancholy. Shots followed, and then the whistlesand wails of aliens. Captain Pestalozzi was having or creating trouble.

Wearily, she stood up and brushed her hair off her forehead. She told herself she was being silly.Without looking again at the figure, she went to the door of the building.

Four ship's days later, theGansas was ready to move on to the next planet.

After the experiences of the first day, despite all that a rather hysterical Mrs. Warhoon could say, itwas generally agreed that the aliens were a degenerate form of life, if anything rather worse than animals,and were therefore fair game for the natural high spirits of the men. For a day or two, a little hunting couldhurt no one.

True, it soon became obvious from planetary sweeps that Pestalozzi harboured only a few hundredthousand of the large sexipeds, congregating round wallows and artificially created swamps; and thesebegan to show evidence that they resented the old Adam in their Eden. But several specimens werecaptured and penned aboard theGansas; Mrs. Warhoon's statue was likewise collected, and a numberof artifacts of a miscellaneous nature, and specimens of plant life.



Disappointingly, there were few other lifeforms on the planet; several varieties of bird, six-leggedrodents, lizards, armour-plated flies, fish and Crustacea in the rivers and oceans, an interesting shrewdiscovered in the Arcticregions that seemed to be an exception to the rule that small warm-bloodedanimals could not survive in such conditions. Little else. Methodically, the Exo Section stocked up theship.

They were ready to embark on the next leg of their reconnaissance.

Mrs. Warhoon went with the ship's padre, the ship's adjutant, Lattimore. and Quilter (who had justbeen promoted to a new post as Lattimore's assistant) to say good-bye to Samuel Melmoth, aliasAylmer Ainson, in his stockade.

"I just hope he's going to be all right," Mrs. Warhoon said.

"Stop worrying. He's got enough ammunition here to shoot every living thing on the planet," Lattimoresaid. He was irritated by his new success with the woman. Ever since the first day of Pestalozzi when shehad suddenly become chummy and climbed into his bed, Hilary had been weepy and unsettled.Lattimore reckoned he was easy-going enough where women were concerned, but he like some tokenthat his attentions had a benevolent effect.

He stood by the gate of the stockade, resting on his thigh crutches and feeling vaguely aggrieved withthe universe. The others could say farewell to young Ainson. Speaking for himself, he had had enough ofthe Ainsons.

The stockade was of reinforced wire net. It formed a wall eight feet high about two square acres ofground. A stream ran through the ground. Some damage had been done in the way of trampling downvegetation and shattering trees by the labour force detailed to erect the stockade, but apart from that thearea represented a typical bit of Pestalozzi country. By the rivulet was a wallow which led to one of thelow native houses. Salad and vegetable beds lay by the wallow, and the whole patch was sheltered ratherdelightfully by the outrageous trees.

Beyond the trees stood the automatic observation post.its radio mast rising gracefully into the air. Nextto it was the eight-roomed building designed from prefabricated parts for Ainson's residence. Two of therooms constituted his living space; the others contained all the apparatus he would need for recording



and interpreting the alien language, an armoury, medical and other supplies, the power plant, and the foodsynthesizer, which could be fed water, soil. rock, anything, and would turn them into nourishment.

Beyond the works of man, keeping apart and considerably abashed, sat an adult female alien and heroffspring. Both had all limbs retracted. Good luck to the lot of them. Lattimore thought, and let's get tohell out of here.

"May you find peace here, my son." said the padre, taking Ainson's hand and jogging it up and downbetween his own. "Remember that in your year of isolation you will always be in God's presence."

"Good luck in your work, Melmoth," said the adjutant. "We'll be seeing you in a year's time."

"Adios, Sam, and I'm sorry about that black eye 1 gave you," Quilter said, clapping Ainson on theback.

"Are you sure there's nothing else you need?" asked Mrs. Warhoon.

Responding as adequately as possible to their words, Aylmer turned and nobbled into his new home.They had rigged him ingenious crutches to combat the gravity, but he had yet to get accustomed to them.He went and lay down on his bed, put his hands behind his head, and listened to them departing.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TheGansas, or the various men working in teams on it. found many marvellous things. Science hadrarely had such a spread.

Before the ship blasted off, the team that worked with Navigator Marcel Gleet finished computationsthat revealed the extraordinary eccentricity of Pestalozzi's orbit



Night was a gay affair on Pestalozzi at this period. When the saffron-coloured sun sank towards thewestern horizon, the lengthening shadows split in twain and a bright yellow star was revealed to the south.This star, though it showed no perceptible disc to the naked eye, shone almost as brightly as a full moonon Earth. And before it in its turn could be carried by the ride of the world below the horizon, anotherstar rose to champion the cause of light This was a welcome white star that burnt till morning, fading fromview only when the saffron sun was again strong enough to take over its recurrent duties.

What Gleet, his comrades, and his computers found was this: that the white, yellow, and saffron sunsformed a triple system, and revolved about one another. And once in every so many years, they cameclose enough to interfere with the orbit of Pestalozzi. Attracted by the mass ofthe other two suns, theplanet would break loose from its sun's attraction and take up an orbit around one of the rivals. When thesame juxtaposition occurred again, many years later, the planet would pass to the third sun, and soeventually back to its first partner. like a flirt in an "Excuse me" dance.

The discovery gave cause for wonder as well as mathematics. Among other things, it explained thehardihood of the aliens, for the range of temperatures they would have to withstand, to say nothing of thecataclysmic nature of the upheaval of changing suns, was something that a man could only contemplatewith awe.

As Lattimore remarked, this astronomic fact by itself went a long way towards explaining the stolidityof temperament and the imperviousness to pain of the aliens. They had developed under conditions thatwould have put a check to terrestrial life almost at its inception.

TheGansas, continuing its reconnaissance, touched down on fourteen other planets in the six-suncluster. On four of them, man could live comfortably, and on three of those four ideal conditions werefound. These were plainly planets of the greatest potential value to man; they were named (the padrefinally swung it on the captain) Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers (since it was conceded that nobodywould tolerate a planet called Leviticus).

On these planets, and on four others where the climate or the atmosphere was intolerable to man, thealiens were found. Though their numbers were comparatively few, their toughness was effectivelyestablished.

Unhappily, there were incidents. On Genesis, a group of wrinkled-hided aliens were allowed aboardtheGansas. At Mrs, Warhoon's insistence, they were taken to the communications deck, and there sheattempted to speak to them, partly with sounds and signs, partly with visipictures which Lattimore andQuilter showed upon a screen. Sheimitated alien sounds, and they imitated her voice. The omens were



promising, when by ill luck the aliens captive on the deck below made themselves heard.

What was said could only be imagined, but at once the aliens began determinedly to escape. Quilterbravely tried to get in their way. He was knocked down and received a broken arm for his trouble.

The aliens stuck in the elevator and had to be exterminated. The disappointment at this misadventurewas general.

On one of the rougher planets, where it was generally conceded that man would have a thin timesurviving, something worse happened.

This planet was named Gansas. It was the last to be visited, and one might have fancied that word ofman's coming had preceded him.

In the remote and rocky plateau of the northern hemisphere lived a savage lifeform informallychristened a chitin bear. It resembled a small polar bear, but was clad in a pelt of alternating bands ofchitin and long white hair. It was fleet of foot, sharp of fang, and ill-natured. Though its natural prey wasthe small horned whale of the temperate Gansas seas, it was partial to the sexiped aliens that had invadedits home.

No doubt this opposition, not encountered elsewhere in the family of planets, had encouraged a littlepugnacity in the aliens. At all events, the first group of terrestrials to fire on a band of investigating alienswas met with answering fire. TheGansas, all unprepared, found itself under bombardment from afortified position set in a cliff.

A direct hit was sustained in one of the open personnel hatches before the enemy was obliterated.

It took five days of all-watch shift work on the part of Engineering to repair the obvious damage, andthen a further week of patient and laborious inspection andpatching to ensure that all the plates of the hullwere unharmed by the shock.

By the end of that time. Mrs. Warhoon had cheered enormously.



"Whatever it was I thought I saw when I ran into that statue must have been a kind of brainstorm." shesaid, cuddling against Bryant Lattimore's knees. "You know, I was all overwrought that day. I really felt -oh, I had the queerest feeling that man had taken the wrong turning somewhere along the evolutionary lineor something."

"Never disregard your first impressions." Lattimore advised her. He could afford a joke, now that shebad adjusted.

"Once we get these aliens back to Earth and teach them English. I won't feel so bad. I take myprofession too seriously; it's a sign of immaturity, I suppose. But we shall have so much knowledge toexchange.... Oh, Bryant... I talk too much, don't I?"

"I love to hear you."

"It's so cosy here on this rug." Luxuriously she felt the rug, luxuriously let her finger-tips trail over thealternating bands of fur and chitin.

Lattimore watched her with a detached greed. She had pretty and dextrous fingers. He said, "We hitvacuum tomorrow for Earth. I don't wish to lose sight of you when we get back, Hilary. Do you mindtelling me just how emotionally involved you are with Sir Mihaly Pasztor?'"

She looked uncomfortable; perhaps she was just trying to blush; but before she could reply, there wasa rap on Lattimore's door and Quilter entered, carrying Lattimore's 0.5 rifle. He nodded in friendlyfashion as Mrs. Warhoon rose from the chitin rug and adjusted her shoulder strap.

"She's all cleaned and ready for the next spot of action." he said, laying the rifle on the table, though hisgaze rested on Mrs. Warhoon. "Talking of action, there's goingto be trouble down on the men's decksunless something's done soon."

"What sort of trouble?" Lattimore asked lazily, putting on his spectacles and offering them bothmescahales.



"Same sort of trouble we had on theMariestopes" Quilter said. "All these rhinomen we got aboard,they make quite a lot of droppings. The men are refusing to clear it away without dirty pay. Guess whatreally annoyed them is that the food synthesizer on Deck H broke down this morning and they were givenreal old-fashioned meat-of-animal instead. The slobs of cooks thought nobody would notice, but severalof the guys are in Sick Bay right now with cholesterol poisoning."

"What a way to run a ship!" Lattimore exclaimed, not displeased, for the more he heard of otherpeople's deficiencies, the more highly he valued his own efficiency. Mrs. Warhoon. on the other hand,was displeased, chiefly because she resented the easy comradeship that had sprung up between Bryantand Quilter.

"Meat-of-animal is not poisonous," she said. "In the backward parts of Earth it is still eaten regularly."She had not quite enough courage to say how much she had enjoyed it herself, dining in seclusion withPasztor at his flat.

"Yeah, only we happen to be civilized, not backward," Quilter said, drawing the mescahale dust intohis lungs. "That's why the guys are going on strike against having to swab up these droppings."

Mrs. Warhoon saw the sardonic grins on their faces; the same expression sat with some regularity onMr. War-boon's face. Like a revelation, she saw how much she hated this simian male superiority; andthe memory of that gentle and superb statue on Pestalozzl helped her to hate it.

"You're all the same, you men!" she cried. "You're all cut off from the basic realities of life in a way awoman could never be. For good or ill, we're a species of flesh-eaters, and always have been,Meat-of-animal is not poisonous - if you're sick after eating it, it's your mind that has poisoned you. Andall this fear of excreta - can't you see that to these poor unfortunate beings we have captured, theirwaste products are a sign of fertility, that they ceremonially offer their rejected mineral salts back to theirearth when they have done with them? My God, what's so repulsive about that? Is it any more repulsivethan the terrestrial religions where living human sacrifices are offered up to various supposed deities? Thetrouble with our culture is that it is based on a fear of dirt, of poison, of excreta. You think excreta's bad,but it's the fear of it that's bad!"

She threw her mescahale down and ground it underfoot, as if to reject all artificiality. Lattimore raisedan eyebrow at her.

"What's got into you. Hilary? Nobody's afraid of the stuff. We're just bored with it. Like you say. it's a



waste product. Okay, so waste it; don't go down on your knees to it No wonder these goddamrhinomen have gotten nowhere if they've oriented their lives round the stuff."

"Besides." Quilter said reasonably, for he was used to the unreasonable outbursts of women, "our guysdon't actually object to shovelling the stuff. They just object to shoveling it without dirty pay."

"But you are both of you missing my point entirely," Mrs. Warhoon began with heat, running her prettyand dextrous fingers into her hair.

"That'll do, Hilary," Lattimore said sharply. "Come off this coprophilous kick and pull yourselftogether."

Next day, the repairedGansas blasted off from this forbidding planet, carrying safely inside it its cargoof living organisms, their hopes, their phobias, their grandeurs and their failings, transpontentially andtrans-cendentally towards the planet Earth.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Old Aylmer was partial to his sleep. He strongly resisted Snok Snok Kam's efforts to rouse him untilthe young utod lifted him up with four legs and shook him gently.

"You must bring yourself to full wakefulness. my dear Manlegs." Snok Snok said. "Fit your crutcheson and come to the door."

"My old bones are stiff, Snok Snok. I quite enjoy their stiffness, as long as I'm left horizontal to do so."

"You prepare yourself for the carrion stage of life," the utod said. He had over the years trained himselfto talk only through his casspu and oral orifices; in that way, he and Ainson could converse after afashion. "When you change to carrion. Mother and I will plant you under the ammps, and in your next



cycle you shall become an utod."

"Thank you very much, but I'm certain that that wasn't what you woke me for. What's the matter?What's worrying you?1'

That was a phrase that in forty years' association with Ainson Snok Snok had never understood. Hepassed it over.

"Some menlegs are coming here. I saw them bumping on a round-legged four-legs towards ourmiddenstead."

Ainson was buckling on his leg supports.

"Men? I don't believe it, after all these years."

Picking up his crutches, he made his way down the corridor to the front door. On either side of himwere doors he had not opened for a long while, doors sealing off rooms containing weapons andammunition, recording apparatus, and rotted supplies; he heeded this material no more than he did theautomatic observation post which had long since wilted, together with its aerial, under the majesty ofDapdrofs storms and gravitational pull.

The grorgs scuttled ahead of Snok Snok and Ainson and plunged on into the middenstead whereQuequo gently reclined. Snok Snok and Ainson halted in the doorway, looking out through the wire. Afour-wheeled overlander had just drawn up at the gate.

Forty years, Ainson thought, forty years peace and quiet - not all of it so damn welcome either - andthey have to come and disturb me now! They might have let me die in peace. I reckon I could havemanaged that before the next esod, and I've no objection to being buried under the ammp trees.

He whistled his grorg back to him, and stood waiting where he was. Three men jumped from thetruck.



As an after-thought, Ainson went back down the corridor, pushed his way into the little armoury, andstood there adjusting his eyes to the light. Dust lay thickly everywhere. He opened a metal box, took adull-shining rifle from within. But the ammunition, where was that? He looked round at the muddle indisgust, dropped the weapon on to the dirty floor and shuffled back into the corridor. He had picked uptoo much peace on Dapdrof to go shooting at his age.

One of the men from the four-wheeler was almost at the front door. He had left his two companions atthe entrance to the stockade.

Ainson quailed. How did you address your own kind? This particular fellow did not look easy toaddress. Although he might well be slightly older than Ainson, hehad not spent forty years under 3G's. Hewore uniform; no doubt service life kept his body healthy, whatever it did "to his mind. He wore thewell-fed but sanctimonious expression of one who has dined at a bishop's table.

"You axe Samuel Melmoth. of theGansas?" the soldier asked. He stood in a neutral pose, legsbraced against the gravity blocking the door with his bulk. Ainson gaped at the sight of him; bipeds Laclothes looked odd when you were unused to the phenomenon.

"Melmoth?" the soldier repeated.

Ainson had no idea what the fellow meant. Nor could he think of anything that might be regarded as asuitable answer.

"Come, come, you are Melmoth of theGansas, aren't you?"

Again the words just baffled.

"He has made a mistake," Snok Snok suggested, regarding the newcomer closely.

"Can't you keep your specimens in their wallows? You are Melmoth; I begin to recognize you now.Why don't you answer me?"



A tatter of an ancient formula stirred in Ainson's mind. Ammps, but this was agony!

"Looks like rain." he said.

"Youdo talk! I'm afraid that you've had rather a wait for your relief. How are you. Melmoth? Youdon't remember me, do you?"

Hopelessly, Ainson peered at the military figure before him. He recollected nobody from his life onEarth except his father.

"I'm afraid.... It's been so long Pve been alone."

"Forty-one years, by my reckoning. My name's Quilter.

Hank Quilter, Captain of the starraiderHightail Quilter. You don't remember me?"

"It's been so long...."

"I gave you a black eye once. It's been on my conscience all these years. When I was directed to thisbattle sector, I took the chance to come and see you. I'm happy to find you haven't been harbouring agrudge against me, though it's a blow to a fellow's pride to find they just are forgotten. How's tricksbeen on Pestalozzi?"

He wanted to be genial to this fellow who seemed to bear him goodwill, but somehow he couldn't getthe line of talk sorted out

"Eh Pesta.... Pesta.... I've been stuck here onDapdrof all these years." Then he thought ofsomething he wanted to say, something that must have worried him for - oh, maybe for ten years, but thatwas a long way back. He leant against the doorpost, cleared his throat, and asked, "Why didn't they



come for me, Captain ... er. Captain?"

"Captain Quilter. Hank. I really wonder you don't remember me. I remember you clearly, and Fvedone a helluva lot of things these last ... Oh well, that's past history, and what you ask me demands ananswer. Mind if I come in?"

"Come in? Oh, you can come in."

Captain Quilter looked over the old cripple's shoulders, sniffed, and shook his head. Plainly the oldboy had gone native and had the hogs in with him.

"Perhaps you'd better come on out to the truck. Fve got a shot of bourbon there you could probablyuse."

"Eh, okay. Can Snok Snok and Quequo come along too?"

"For crying sakes! These two boys? They stink- You may be used to it, Melmoth. but I'm not Let megive you a hand."

Angrily, Ainson brushed the offered arm away. He hobbled forward on his crutches.

"Won't be long, Snok Snok," he said, in the language they had contrived between them. "I've just gotto get a little matter sorted out."

With pleasure, he noticed that he was puffing far less than the captain. At the truck they both rested,while the two rankers looked on with furtive interest Almost apologetically, the captain offered a bottle;when Ainson refused it, the other drank deep. Ainson spent the interval trying to think of somethingfriendly to say.

All he could think of was, "They never came for me, Captain."



"It wasn't anyone's fault, Melmoth. You've been well away from trouble here, believe me. On Earth,there has been a whole packet of woes. I'd better tell you about it.

"Remember the old-type Contained Conflicts they used to have on Charon? Well, there was anAnglo-Brazilian conflict that got out of hand. The Britishers started contravening the laws of warfare asthey then were; it was proved that they had smuggled in a Master Explorer, which was a social rank notallowed in the conflicts - in case they took advantage of their expert knowledge to exploit the localterrain, you know - I studied the whole incident in Mil Hist school, but you forget the finer details.Anyhow, this explorer fellow, Ainson, was brought back from Charon to Earth for trial, and he was shot,and the Brazilians said he committed suicide, and the Britishers said the Brazilians shot him. and well, theStates got involved - turned out an American revolver was found outside the prison, and in no time awar blew up, just like old times."

Old Ainson had come so adrift in this account, he could think of nothing to say. Mention of his ownname had befogged him.

"Did you think I'd been shot?" he asked

Quilter took a drag at his bourbon.

"We didn't know what had happened to you. The International War broke out on Earth in 2037, andwe sort of forgot about you. Though there has been a lot of fighting in this sector of space, particularly onNumbersand Genesis. They're practically destroyed. Clementina caught a packet too. You were luckythere were only conventional forces here. Didn't you sec anything of the fighting here?"

"Fighting on Dapdrof?"

"Fighting on Pestalozzi."

"No fighting here, I don't know about there."



"You must have escaped it in this hemisphere. The north hemisphere is practically fried, judging bywhat I saw of it on the way in."

"You never came for me."

"Hell, I'm explaining, aren't I? Have some drink; it'll steady you. Only a very few people knew of you,and I guess most of them are dead now. I stuck my neck out to get to you. Now I've got a ship of myown under my command, I'd be glad to take you home - well, there's only a fragment of Great Britainleft, but you'd be welcome in the States. It'd sort of square up that old black eye, eh? What do you say,Melmoth?"

Ainson sucked at the bottle. He could hardly take in the idea of going back to Earth. There would beso much he would miss. But one ought to want to get back home, and there was his duty. ... "Thatreminds me, Captain. I've got all the tapes and recordings and vocabularies and stuff."

"What stuff's that?"

"Why, now you're forgetting. The stuff I was landed here to get. I have worked out a good bit of theutodian language - the language of these ... these aliens, you know."

Quilter looked very uncomfortable. He wiped his lips with his fist.

"Perhaps we could pick that up some other time."

"What, in another forty years? Oh no, I'm not going back to Earth without that gear, Captain. Why, it'smy life work."

"Quite so," said Quilter with a sigh. A life's work, he thought. And how often was a life's work of novalue except to the worker. He hadn't the heart to tell this poor old shell that the aliens were practicallyextinct, eradicated by the hazards of war from all the planets of the Six Star Cluster, except for somedwindling hundreds here on the southern hemisphere of PestalozzL It was one of the sad accidents of life.



"We'll take whatever you want to take, Melmoth," he said heavily. He rose and straightened hisuniform, beckoning to the two soldiers standing idly near by.

"Bonn, Wilkinson, run the truck up to the door of the shack and get Mr. Melmoth's kit loadedaboard."

It was all happening too fast for Ainson. He felt himself on the verge of tears. Quilter patted his back.

"You'll be okey. There must be a pile of credits waiting somewhere in a bank for you; I'll see you getevery cent that's due to you. You'll be glad to get out of this crushing gravity."

Coughing, the old figure stirred his crutches. How could he say farewell to dear old Quequo, who haddone so much to teach him some of her wisdom, and Snok Snok.... He began to weep.

Quilter tactfully turned his back and surveyed the stiff spring foliage around him.

"It's the unaccustomed drink, Captain Printer," Ainson said in a minute. "Did you tell me England hadbeen destroyed?"

"Now don't start worrying about that, Melmoth. It really is wonderful to be alive on Earth now, and Iswear that's true. The life is a bit regimented as yet, but all national differences have been composed, atleast for the time being. Everyone is reconstructing like mad - of course the war gave a terrific boost totechnology. I wish I was twenty years younger."

"But you said England...."

"They are damming half the North Sea to replace the disintegrated areas with topsoil, and London isgoing to be rebuilt - on a modest scale of course."

Affectionately, he put an arm round the curved shoulders, thinking what a stretch of history was



embraced in that narrow space.

The old boy shook his head with vigour, scattering tears.

"Trouble is, after all these years I'm out of touch. Why, I don't think I'll ever be in contact with anyoneproperly any more."

Moved. Quilter cleared a lump from his own throat. Forty years! You didn't wonder the old guy felt ashe did. How the grokkies would lap up the story!

"Why now, that's a pack of nonsense. You and I have soon got things straight between each other,haven't we, Melmoth?"

"Yes, yes, that certainly is so. Captain Quinto."

At last the military vehicle bumped away from the stockade. Limbs deretracted, the two utods stoodon the edge of the middenstead and watched it until it was out of sight. Only then did the younger turn tolook at the older. Speech inaccessible to human ears passed between them.

The younger one moved into the deserted building. He examined the armoury. The soldiers had left ituntouched, as directed by the one who had spoken about the deaths of so many utods. Satisfied, heturned back and walked without pause through the gate of the stockade. He had remained patientlycaptive for a small fraction of Ms life. Now it was time that he thought about freedom.

Time, too. that the rest of his brothers thought about freedom.



Aldiss, Brian W - The Dark Light Years v11

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